


Seismic

by Depseudemonas



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Captivity, Codependency, Coercion, Consent Issues, Dubious Consent, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fuck Or Die, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, Internalised Homophobia, Kidnapping, Less smutty than it sounds for the most part, M/M, Miscommunication, Non-Consensual Voyeurism, POV Third Person Limited, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Pining, Pining Link, Recovery, Repression, Unreliable Narrator, heavy angst with a happy ending, manipulation and mind games (by a third party)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-06-12
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:53:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 38,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24338440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Depseudemonas/pseuds/Depseudemonas
Summary: “Link,” Rhett warns, and there’s that thrill in Link’s chest  – the one that always comes with changing Rhett’s mind, or making him laugh, or needling him until he’s one-hundred per cent focused on Link and only Link; a thrill that he never dares examine too closely, and keeps in the safety of his ribcage along with several vital organs.Stuck in a real-life nightmare and held against their will, Rhett and Link only have each other to rely on. As their relationship begins to crack under the pressure, Link is afraid of what might be revealed.
Relationships: Christy Neal/Link Neal, Jessie McLaughlin/Rhett McLaughlin, Rhett McLaughlin/Link Neal
Comments: 189
Kudos: 171





	1. The Room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please heed the tags - due to the nature of the trope used, this fic deals with quite a lot of dubious consent and related issues (the rating and most warnings are for future chapters). There will be a happy ending, I promise! Feel free to DM me if you feel something hasn't been warned for appropriately (or any other reason really, I won't bite). This work hasn't been seen by my normal beta, any mistakes are my own and I love concrit, so go ahead.

“Jus’ do it, Bo.” Link’s voice is soft, shaking like the rest of him. Rhett could be shaking too, or it could be just transferring from Link to him, like they are two tectonic plates pushed up together, and the vibrations of them touching are tearing down whole civilisations to nothing but rubble. A faultline under their very lives, one that they’ve been avoiding for decades.

“It’s not our fault,” Link says, looking up at him with sunken eyes. “We didn’t choose this. They’ll understand.”

The body under him seems so small and frail that Rhett’s weight should be crushing it, but that’s not why Rhett is afraid to touch. He glances up to the ceiling, sees the lens pointing at them, drawn to them by the movement.

“Don’t look at it,” Link begs. “Think about Jessie, if that makes this easier, just … don’t look at _it_.”

He’s right, Rhett thinks, when he says that they don’t have a choice.

This was not how it was meant to happen.

  
  


_One week earlier._

  
  


Link wakes up naturally, and that’s how he knows something is wrong. He has his alarm on his phone, but if that fails, if he forgets to plug it in to charge, then there’s the alarm on the radio clock next to the bed. Then, if he should forget to charge his phone _and_ a power cut knocks out the clock, there’s always Christy, who would be thrilled to get the chance to whip the blankets off him and laugh as he squirms in the fresh morning air.

Speaking of air, it smells funny. He hasn’t opened his eyes yet, which is also odd. He’s almost certainly going to be late for work, he’ll probably have Rhett leaning on his car horn outside the house any minute, but all urgency at the thought seems to be hidden behind a wall of lethargy.

Maybe he’s ill. Yeah, that’s probably it; there’s been some nasty crud going around the studio, he was bound to get it sooner or later.

“ -i-k, I n-ed -o- t- -pen your eyes, buddy.”

Link frowns. Why the heck is Rhett in his bedroom? A hand taps the side of his face, and he jerks away from it with a groan.

Rhett makes a noise that’s almost a laugh, but that’s what finally breaks Link out of his daze – not quite a laugh, too tense, too desperate. Rhett is frightened, and Link won’t allow it to continue.

He forces his heavy eyes open, jackknifes upright in bed and nearly breaks Rhett’s nose when his forehead collides with his friend’s face. Link yelps, rolling onto his side and clutching his head.

“Aw what the hell, Link?” Rhett clutches at his nose. “Really?”

‘What’re you doing looming over me like that while I sleep, man?” Rhett really only has himself to blame here, Link thinks acidly. The stars filling his vision subside quickly, and he finally sees that he’s not in his bedroom.

“What the crap?” Hit sits up. The room is an off-white colour from floor to ceiling, ten times as impersonal as the most mundane of motel rooms, almost like it’s trying to be clinical but someone messed up with the paint swatches. It’s square, pretty large – he’d estimate it at about 15x15 feet, with a high ceiling. There are two doors, but no windows. It’s all a bit fuzzy, but that’s because Links glasses are probably wherever his clothes are, and right now that is not here. 

He turns a wide-eyed look on Rhett – Rhett, who is perched on the bed in nothing but his boxers, eyes watering as he prods at his nose. 

Links brain very quickly processes several rationales of the situation:

One: this is a prank. (It is not a prank, he decides quickly. Rhett has never been a huge fan of pranks, or at least not elaborate ones beyond good-naturedly tricking Link into looking like an idiot.)

Two: they’ve died in a freak accident and this is the afterlife. (If Link still believed in an afterlife, he’s pretty sure the walls would not be the colour of turned mushroom soup, and he would be wearing clothes.)

Three: Link is dreaming. (Link has had dreams about Rhett in his boxers in a variety of locations and dream-genres. This has never been one of them.)

Which leaves Link with Four: they’ve been kidnapped. It’s an absurd notion, but next on the list is alien abduction and Link doesn’t even believe in aliens like that. The last thing he can remember is leaving the studio to get lunch. Then, nothing.

“Rhett?” he says. His best friend’s name encompasses all the questions he could possibly ask in this situation, and Rhett answers all of them with only three words in return:

“I don’t know.”

One of the doors leads to a small wetroom with a toilet, a sink and a fixed showerhead that is embedded in the ceiling. The other door is locked, and stays so when Rhett rams it hard with his shoulder while Link watches from the bed and worries out loud about his back.

‘Why don’t you try it then?’ Rhett snaps. 

Link wants to get short with him in return, but he knows that Rhett is frightened – he’s told Link about how he’d woken up on the floor in the bathroom; about how, when he saw Link tucked in the bed with its crisp white sheets, he’d thought that Link was dead, just for a moment. Rhett had been awake for ages before Link had started to stir (and he’s already drawing theories about that, which he explains to link in a rush of rapid paced sentences about how he’d metabolise drugs faster because of his larger body mass).

“I can’t risk my shoulder,” Link reminds him. He gathers the bedsheet up around his waist and slips out of the bed anyway, holding it tightly in place.

“We’re in our boxers all the time at work,” Rhett says pithily. “Don’t get all weird on me now, Link. I can’t deal with you at the minute.”

That stings. Link feels his face burn, and he looks at the floor.

“Idun’ave’em,” he mutters to the carpet. 

“Link, just help me with the damned door.”

“I don’t have underwear!” Link squeaks, louder than he means to.

Rhett freezes.

“I - I don’t have my underwear, I don’t have my g-glasses, I don’t –” He feels a lurch of nausea when his fingers go automatically to his left fourth finger and find bare skin. “I don’t have my ring!”

Someone took it. There’s no way he’d take his ring off – no way Rhett would either, and a wild glance in his direction shows Rhett's ring finger, too, is bare of everything but a tan line. Someone took their rings, the same someone probably took their clothes. The thought of a stranger's hands on him, undressing him, ratchets Link’s nausea up another notch, and before he can think any further he’s dashing for the bathroom, heaving into the dry toilet bowl.

Big warm hands stroke over his shoulder, but pull away quickly, like Rhett isn’t sure if it’s okay to touch his retching, naked best friend.

Normally, Link would say it wasn’t, but he thinks these circumstances might be extenuating.

"Rhett," he whimpers between heaves. No matter how hard his stomach cramps, nothing comes up but drool. 

Rhett's hands return, rubbing across the top of his back.

“I got ya buddy,” he says. “Get it all up.” It’s such a Momma Di thing to say that Link hiccups a laugh.

“Don’t think there’s anything to come up,” he croaks. “M’starvin’.” 

As if it’s agreeing with him, he hears the gurgle of Rhett’s belly. Link snorts and, lightheaded and silly from the panic of it all, turns away from the toilet and pats Rhett’s stomach.

"I feel ya, big fella.” It makes Rhett laugh, too, and then long arms are pulling Link in against a broad, fuzzy chest. His face gets smushed against Rhett’s collar bone, and he hates himself for how comforting he finds the other man’s body; big, warm and all-encompassing.

Rhett’s skin is goosepimpled and a bit clammy. Link squirms his arms out of the vice-like grip, and wraps them around his friend’s back, returning the embrace. 

_Ding_. A loud, pleasant chime echoes off the bathroom tile, and they flinch in unison.

“Very good,” a disembodied voice says, inflectionless and bland. 

“What. The _fuck?”_ Rhett says very quietly into Link’s ear.

Link can’t respond, frozen like a kid caught with one hand in the cookie jar. Rhett lets go of him, and Link manages ( _just)_ not to cling. Instead, he finds the sheet where it has pooled around his folded knees, and covers himself, attempting to tie it at his hip with mixed results. He looks like a frat boy at a toga party, if said frat boy was a middle-aged guy whose knot-tying ability was impaired by his shaking hands.

“Did you hear where that came from?” Rhett asks, but before he can so much as shake his head in reply, the voice speaks again.

“Please go to the door to collect your reward.” The voice is monotone, inflectionless.

Rhett’s eyes widen, making him look even more endearingly bug-eyed than normal, and he spins on his heel to run back into the main room just in time to see the door click shut, a brown paper envelope left on the carpet. He slams a hand against the door, but it doesn’t even rattle in its frame.

“Who is this?” Rhett is naturally loud, but when he’s truly angry his voice _booms_. “Why are you doing this?”

Link should be shouting too, but instead all he has is this lightheaded panic balled up inside him that won’t break the surface. Part of him still doesn’t think this is real. Sure, this isn’t a typical dream scenario for him, but maybe something they ate for that last _Will it?_ challenge was off, or maybe he’s had an accident and is in the hospital on some really strong painkillers. He tries urging himself to wake up, which doesn’t work, so instead he picks up the envelope. Its flat shape is distorted by whatever has been stuffed inside it; part of it feels soft, there is plenty of give when he squeezes it, and the rest is solid and flat.

Rhett gives the door a final kick, before he turns. He meets Link’s eyes and they have one of their wordless exchanges, probably something like:

_“Should I?”_

_“Go for it.”_

_“What if it’s something dangerous?”_

_“Just open it, Neal”_

Or that’s how Link interprets it, anyway. Carefully he slides a finger under the flap and tears it open, tipping it up and letting the contents fall to the floor, jumping backwards just in case.

There’s a small unbranded electronic tablet, and something else, dark red and wadded up.

Rhett tilts his head. “Are those –”

Flushing, Link grabs the red fabric up from the ground.”Yes,” he says through gritted teeth. His boxer shorts. He can tell from the waft of an unfamiliar detergent smell that hits him that they’ve been washed.

Rhett hits the power button on the device, but it does nothing.

Leaving him to it, Link shuffles back to the bathroom, red spreading from his face down his back. It’s not because of Rhett, not really – they’ve seen each other naked so many times now that Link couldn’t count them. But there’s a third, unknown party involved in all this that makes him feel sick to his stomach and conscious of every part of his body exposed for them to see. 

To _see_.

The voice had _responded_ to the hug in the bathroom, or else the timing was a hell of a coincidence. Which means that the voice saw them.

Link looks up. The ceiling is made up of white tiles, but now he looks at it he can see the small white square right in the middle, near the showerhead. There’s a black dot in the centre of it, fuzzy without his glasses but definitely _there_ : a small lens that glints at him like a malevolent eye. 

He backs out of the room, clutching his boxers to his chest.

“What is it?”

He walks until his shoulder bumps Rhett.

“Can I get a hug, brother?” Link says, trying to keep his voice even whilst also trying to communicate to Rhett with just his eyes that the hug is simply a cover. Partly so Rhett doesn’t act weird, partly so Rhett doesn’t think Link _needs_ another mostly-naked hug, because he doesn’t.

If they were in the studio, Rhett might have interpreted the look wrong on purpose, for comedic effect. _“What’s happening to your eyes, man?_ ” But he knows what Link means. He opens his arms and Link makes sure his mouth ends up by Rhett's ear, and he feels the tickle of his beard on his neck.

“There’s a camera in the freakin’ bathroom,” he hisses. There’s probably one in here too – keeping his chin on Rhett’s shoulder he strains his eyes to look, but the ceiling is too far for his impaired vision to spot anything out of the ordinary. He feels Rhett looking around too. They should probably end the hug, he thinks, because it’s getting weird.

“Go put your underwear on,” Rhett says. Link nods mutely, willing himself to return to the bathroom without faltering, reluctance making his feet drag. In the end, he can’t bring himself to drop the sheet, or even close the door between them. Something in him requires that he keeps Rhett in his field of vision, or he too will be taken away like the rest of Link’s life. He shimmies his boxers on underneath the sheet, getting it bunched in the waistband, elastic uncomfortably twisted, but he’s done it all without the camera catching sight of his junk so he’ll count that as a win.

When he returns to the room, Rhett is sitting on the bed, staring at the ceiling. Link sits next to him, and Rhett leans in so their heads are nearly touching.

“Far left corner,” he says. “And back right.”

Link makes a small noise to let him know he’s understood, and flops back onto the bed. It is, at least, comfortable. He’s pretty sure it’s memory foam.

The thought of their kidnappers getting them a _memory foam_ mattress strikes him as suddenly hilarious for some reason, and he can’t help it – he’s laughing. Rhett, startled, looks down at him like he’s lost it – and maybe he has. But Rhett has always found Link’s laughter to be inherently funny in itself, infectious even when Link is laughing at him _,_ so it’s inevitable that, after a moment, Rhett too is lying on the bed giggling until he cries.

“This is so dumb,” Link says, once he can speak without wheezing, stomach muscles burning. 

“It’s terrifying."

Link still isn’t used to this new post-therapy Rhett, who outwardly declares his emotions with an upfront honesty. He’s a little jealous of new Rhett, he admits to himself.

“We haven’t seen their faces,” he points out. “That’s a good sign, right?”

“Yeah,” Rhett says. “Probably a ransom thing.”

He is most likely right, as always. Link feels a flood of relief. It makes sense – the cameras are probably proof of life. For the first time since he awoke, he feels his heartbeat return to normal in his chest. Rhett is a reassuring warm weight next to him, not quite touching as they lie there together.

They’ll have to share the bed, he thinks. What time of day is it, even? He’s tired, but the twist of hunger in his stomach keeps him from drifting to sleep right then and there. He’s thirsty, too.He hasn’t seen a cup anywhere, but he can drink from the faucet if he has to.

Rhett’s hand grabs his arm as he goes to slide off the bed.

“Where you goin’?” It’s unlike him to be so clingy, he really must be freaked out. 

_Duh, Link_. Of course he’s freaked out.

“Gonna get a drink from the tap.”

“What if it’s drugged, or poisoned?”

Link had been trying not to think about that, actually. 

“Do they need to be that sneaky if they locked us up in here?” He wonders if Rhett has any theories on who the anonymous ‘they’ is. _Are_. This is surely too much for a one person operation to manage. “Besides, if I don’t drink something I’m gonna shrivel up like an umeboshi, and I know you don’t want that.”

“Nasty sour Link? No thanks.”

“Don’t want me giving you a butthole mouth?” The innuendo is clumsy, the way it usually is when Link tries to do it intentionally to make Rhett laugh.

“ _What?”_

“I mean when your lips go all pursed up like,” he demonstrates. “Butthole mouth!”

“You ever _seen_ a butthole, man?” But it’s had the desired effect, Rhett is smiling again. Link is, too, until he turns the bathroom faucet and –

“There’s no water.” Nothing. The pipes make a groaning sound, and nothing comes out. Link tries the shower, too, but it’s as dry as LA summer.

Link slaps a frustrated hand against the wall tile. “What the _hell_?” 

The anger that had been hiding earlier under a layer of fear and confusion begins to bubble to the surface. 

“What are you playing at?” He shouts at the ceiling. “Who the hell are you?” He hears footsteps on the carpet, then Rhett is there in the room just in time to see Link punch the wall. He grabs Links arm, and gets shoved for his trouble.

“You’re gonna hurt yourself, man.”

Hah! Rhett’s one to talk, after all that fuss over the door. Link is suddenly spoiling for a fight, so he rounds on him, fists clenched, the left one throbbing in time with his heartbeat.

“So if we just do nothing, with no food or water, we’ll be fine, right?”

Normally if Link pushes Rhett around he gets pushed right back, but Rhett is doing that de-escalation thing that makes Link bristle, putting his hands up placatingly.

“Hey, I realise I’m sounding like a big old hypocrite right now, buddy, but we’ve got to keep calm.”

Link gets right up in his space, pushes him again.

“ _Link_ ,” Rhett warns, and there’s a thrill in Link’s chest – the one that always comes with changing Rhett’s mind, or making him laugh, or needling him until he’s one-hundred per cent focused on Link and _only_ Link; a thrill that Link never dares examine too closely, and keeps in the safety of his ribcage along with several vital organs.

When it comes, the chime seems louder the second time, like someone ringing a doorbell right by Link’s ear. 

“Physical altercations will result in an appropriate punishment,” the voice says, just as flat and monotone as before. “Consider this your only warning.”

Link sees Rhett do a full body flinch, and while he’s still mad the guilt floods in too. _This isn’t Rhett’s fault, Link, stop being such an asshole_.

“We’re thirsty and hungry,” he says, proud of how he manages to keep his voice even. “You can’t punish us for that.”

“You have to earn your keep,” the voice says.

“What on earth does that mean?” Rhett’s hand touches his wrist, a light reminder – though whether he’s reminding him _‘I’m here_ ’ or ‘ _keep calm_ ’ or both, Link doesn’t know.

“Completing tasks will earn rewards. I have activated your tablet.”

“What kind of twisted game are you playing?”

The voice doesn’t ask any more questions.

“This is the plot to one of your horror films, isn’t it?” he asks Rhett.

“It does have a _Saw_ -like vibe, I’m not gonna lie. At least we don't have hacksaws.” Link doesn’t understand the relevance of that last bit, and probably doesn’t want to.

"We should go look at the tablet?" He doesn’t mean for it to be a question, but it comes out like one. Rhett is still holding his wrist – he only realises this when the other man squeezes it.

"Let’s take a look."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it begins! I've stared at this for so long I had to post it now, or I never would. I should be updating pretty regularly, as a big chunk is already written. All feedback is welcome, thank you for reading :)


	2. The Rules

The tablet is basic, starting up with a white screen and no logo, and the home screen is equally bland, stripped of everything but an email app neither of them recognize. 

There are two messages in the inbox.

To: a98j2034

From: theroom

Subject: Rules

Complete the tasks you are sent. 

Failure to complete tasks will mean no reward.

Tasks must be completed before lights out to count towards the day’s total.

Acts of violence, sabotage or excessive non co-operation will result in punishment.

Bonus tasks may be completed at the room’s discretion.

To: a98j2034

From: theroom

Subject: Instruction

Twenty push-ups

  
  


“That’s it?” Link asks. It seems so trivial – laughably so.

“Link,” Rhett says softly. "Look at the date on the email." 

He looks. He’s surprised to see that it’s 11PM, and it’s –

"We’ve lost three days?" Neither email has a reply option, Link notes. What would they say, anyway?

Rhett nods, not blinking, Link can see that he’s trying to process it without giving in to whatever emotion he’s got zapping around in his head. It must be hard – he’s never known anyone who feels things quite so intensely as Rhett does.

"Are we gonna do push-ups?" Links asks.

" _Should_ we?" Rhett sounds apprehensive. "It’s a simple task now, but you know it’s gonna escalate. Perhaps if we just don’t engage …"

Link can see what he’s getting at, but somehow he thinks that just saying ‘I don’t want to play’ isn’t going to ride.

"If we don’t, d’you really think they’d let us starve to death?"

Rhett chews at his lip, but doesn’t have an answer.

"What if I do it, and you don’t," Link suggests. The idea is terrifying, honestly, and he’s not sure if he’d be able to go through with it, but he doesn’t have to find that out in the end, as Rhett vehemently shakes his head.

"No way. We’re in this together, right? I’m not letting you alone."

Link hopes the explosion in his chest doesn’t show on his face.

"I’m real thirsty, brother," he mumbles. Rhett pats his arm. 

"C’mon them, up and at ‘em."

They get down on the floor, and Link squeezes his eyes shut so he doesn’t see Rhett give in to the instructions all because of Link. If it had been Rhett here on his own, he thinks, there would have been no giving in.

The push-ups pass quickly, he counts them down rather than up and doesn’t do a single one extra. Finally looking up, he sees Rhett is still going, a distant look in his eye that tells Link he’s gone somewhere else that isn’t this little beige room. Link wonders if Rhett has taken him there, too.

"Hey." He hovers a hand over Rhett’s pistoning right shoulder. When he pushes up, Link feels the heat from his skin on his own palm, almost touching but not quite.

The chime sounds, startling Rhett out of his trance. 

"Well done," the voice says. "The water in the bathroom will be activated for ten minutes. It is advised that you use the facilities whilst this is the case. Food and drink will arrive shortly." The voice clicks off. Rhett lets out a shaky breath.

"You wanna shower first or second?" he asks.

They realize pretty quickly that showering is the priority in the ten minute window, as the toilet will hold at least one flush even after the water has been turned off. Rhett goes first (because he’s taller, obviously, the small piece of tradition unexpectedly comforting in this surreal situation), counting the seconds while he scrubs. Link sits on the bed while he does it, messing with the tablet to try and get into its systems, or at least find some kind of identifying information. There’s nothing except the nameless email app, the string of numbers that is the tablet’s address - and ‘theroom’, of course. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose, trying to squash the growing dizzy-headache that comes with not wearing his glasses for long periods of time.

It’s his turn before he knows it, and he showers with his mouth open – swallowing as much air as water – whilst trying not to imagine what gross tank it’s been sitting in for god knows how long. It’s only after that he thinks of the camera, and hot shame hits him, turning him red all over.

Being naked and wet in front of someone seems somehow worse than just being regular dry-naked, though Link can’t quite put his finger on why. Some people find showers sexy, but that seems sacrilegious to him – not to mention the slippery tile being an accident waiting to happen.

Still, he feels more awkward than normal at the idea of leaving the bathroom without some sort of covering, so he grimaces and wiggles his boxers up over his wet thighs, just as he hears a telltale groan of pipes.

"Water’s off again," he tells Rhett on leaving the bathroom. "Don’t flush the toilet ‘til we really have to, I guess." He pulls a face at the idea.

"How d’you think the food is gonna get here?" Rhett asks, glancing around as if a hatch might magically appear to dispense dinner.

It doesn’t take long for his question to be answered. What feels like maybe thirty minutes later there is a sudden  _ thunk _ , and both men jump to their feet as the door swings open.

Nobody enters. There’s no one on the other side. What there  _ is _ is a short corridor behind it (no more than ten foot long, if that) then another door – a heavy security door, no less. On the floor are two water bottles, no labels, and two unwrapped granola bars on a paper plate.

They look at each other in wordless agreement that it feels like a setup. Neither of them steps over the threshold.

Eventually, the voice seems to cotton on that they aren’t going to move. 

"After five minutes, the door will close whether you have retrieved your reward or not. When the doors are closed, the corridor is airtight. It is advised that you return to the room before the door is closed."

Rhett nods to himself. "Hold my hand."

"What?"

"Hold my hand and stand this side of the door. I’m going to get the stuff."

Link shakes his head frantically.

"Yeah, I am. Look, this way they can’t shut the door between us, right?"

"Not without chopping off my  _ arm _ , which seems perfectly feasible at this point!"

Rhett just grabs his hand anyway, and tugs Link into the doorway. 

"Keep your feet on this side of the bar, okay?" Of course his grip is even damper than usual, thanks to nerves and recent showering. Link holds it white-knuckle tight as Rhett edges out of the room. The supplies are only five feet in, so Rhett makes it without much of a stretch. One handed he rolls each bottle back to the doorway, then finally picks up the plate and returns. Once everything is safely inside they retreat to the bed, breathing like they’d just run a mile.

All that for two bottles of water and some shitty cereal bars. Rhett is eyeing said bars hungrily, and Link feels a pang of worry – it’s not enough food even for his average-guy appetite, let alone Rhett-the-all-consuming-void. 

"Why d’you think they took them out the wrappers?" he asks. Rhett shrugs.

"It’s all about the isolation, I think. The dumb robot voice, referring to themselves as ‘the room’ on the email. Like this room is all there is." He huffs a laugh. "Wanna make it a brand taste test?"

The allusion to their normal life is jarring, but it makes Link smile, which was probably Rhett’s aim.

Link thinks for a moment, then breaks out his titlecard voice. "Can we guess who made these granolas Rhett saved?"

Rhett snorts. "Will this cereal reduce our fear-eal?"

Oh, it’s so  _ bad _ , Link loves it. He holds out his bar. He can’t quite bring himself to say it – he doesn’t want to associate the words with this situation, should he ever get to say them in the studio again – and Rhett obviously feels the same because he dinks the bars together in silence.

It tastes … well, like the best granola bar Link has ever had, actually. Not surprising, given that he’s so hungry he’d happily chow down on some bull testicles right about now.

Or not. Maybe. Now he’s thinking about bull testicles, isn’t that just great? He twists the cap off his water and necks it.

"I was gonna suggest we ration this," Rhett says dryly, before ruining it by drinking about two thirds of his own bottle. Link lets out a satisfied sigh.

"I needed that." His mouth feels kind of sore now, like it had dried out so much that the water actually burns a bit as his throat re-hydrates. Rhett flops back on the bed, long limbs outstretched. 

"We should keep the bottles, might come in handy."

"Yeah, cus I was going to throw them in the non-existent trash can."

"... you have a point there."

"Maybe we could fill them up from the toilet cistern, in case we get desperate."

"Speaking of getting desperate …" Link lies down too, feeling reluctantly sleepy after finally getting some food in his belly. "... should I try not to pee? Will that make me less dehydrated?"

Rhett blinks at him. "I don’t think you can stop yourself peeing." 

"Mmm. True."

They lapse into silence. Link slowly feels his limbs turning floppy as he relaxes, Rhett’s presence beside him acting as some sort of balm. A calm-balm. Ha. 

"Link."

"Mmm?"

"You can’t seriously be going to sleep."

"I dunno, I could be," he mumbles.

"You really  _ can _ sleep anywhere. I’m gonna use the bathroom."

"No!" Link sits up so quickly his head spins. "I wanna go first."

Rhett gives him his patented  _ What, Link? _ look that the fans love to GIF and compile. Compilate. One of those words.

"I don’t wanna pee on your pee," he says primly, and pushes himself up off the bed.

"You’re so weird, man," Rhett says. His words follow Link into the bathroom. Link is aware that it’s a strange line to draw when they’ve literally drunk each other’s urine before, but that was for the show; in this situation he feels more than entitled to draw whatever lines he pleases, thank you very much, Rhett.

He does his business, body between him and the camera, thank god. He wonders if someone is watching the feed like a security guard does, or if it’s just all being stored on a cloud somewhere.

He must be panicking again, he thinks, because he feels a bit numb and the room is tilting. He tucks himself back into his boxers and automatically goes to wash his hands, but of course there’s no water. He shuffles back into the room, anxiously wondering if his hands smell like pee.

"You okay, buddy?" Rhett sounds sleepy. They’re gonna share the bed. Link wonders if Rhett will mind him getting close, this time, if the usual unwritten rules will be slackened due to the extenuating circumstances.

The thought stirs up heat in his belly.

"Hey, you’re not coming down with something, are you?" Rhett kneels on the bed.

Does he know? Can he somehow hear what sick things Link is thinking? He stops in front of Rhett, swaying slightly.

"You’re sweating," Rhett says, sounding concerned. His voice sounds funny, like he’s had a couple too many beers, a little slurred.

Link’s gaze slides to the mostly empty water bottles sitting innocently on the bed sheet.

"Oh shit," he tries to say, but his tongue is heavy in his mouth. It’s like trying to talk with a massive dead cow tongue in there instead of his own.

"They drugged th’wudder," Rhett slurs, because even now their minds are harmonious, running on the same set of tracks, and other assorted metaphors that swirl in Links head as he sags onto the bed.

"Link,  _ Link,  _ stay’wake," Rhett urges.

Link knows that he should be panicking, but for some reason the bit of his brain which manufactures the panic-stuff has disconnected. He feels lovely, relaxed and floaty and a little bit  _ sexy _ , but too soft to do anything about it. Future Link will probably be relieved about that. Future Link hates sexy Link, for reasons he can’t fathom right now.

" _ Link _ ." Rhett is shaking him. Link would swat him off, but someone has taken all the bones out of his limbs. Rude.

"Got no bones," he tells Rhett. "Sorry."

Rhett makes a noise, a distressed whine that Link doesnt like  _ at all. _

_ "Ssshhh  _ no no no. P’tend I’m patting your hair. Buddyroll. Bo.  _ Bo. _ Why don’ we use that anymore, thas’nice. You’re my bo. Can I go to sleep now?"

Rhett hauls himself across the bed until he’s lying across Links shins, blocking the door from Link’s sight.

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah, you go sleep. I won’ let them touch ya, bo."

Link can’t think what ‘them’ he means, but he appreciates the sentiment. Or he will, after he has a quick nap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can't promise all updates will be quite as fast (quarantine is making inspiration fickle) but I'm managing a pretty good pace and I'm about 10K ahead at the moment! Thanks muchly for the comments and kudos, you folks are great <3  
> (Still unbeta'd, so let me know if you spot any glaring errors If you feel like it.)


	3. Big Brother

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check those tags, folks! Some of those warnings begin to come into play here.

Link wakes up shaking, heart thundering in his chest. He’s having a heart attack, he thinks. He’s dying, here in this bland room. He’s never going to see his family again.

When death turns out not to be imminent and his pulse finally slows, he rolls onto his side. It takes considerable effort, because Rhett is draped across his legs, snoring like a chainsaw.

His mouth tastes like something died in it. He remembers eating the granola bars and having a drink, but from then on all is a grey fuzziness, like someone has replaced his memories with dryer lint.  _ The water. _ It has to have been drugged. Link is amazed that he’s woken up first, his body mass being smaller than Rhett’s.

He grabs his friend’s shoulder, shaking him gently awake, and leaves him groaning on the bed while he stalks across the room, eyes scanning this way and that to spot any changes — there must have been some reason for knocking the pair of them out.

The water bottles and the paper plate are gone, but the most noticeable change is the camera. Now, even Link’s fuzzy eyes can spot it — it’s right in the middle of the ceiling: a shiny black camera with 360 rotation, sleek and undoubtedly expensive, judging by the make. As he moves across the floor, the camera moves on its mount with an almost-inaudible purr to follow him. Impulsively, he gives it the finger.

If anything else in the main room has changed, he can’t spot it. He even checks the inch-high space under the bed, and finds nothing but more grey carpet. He looks to the bathroom next, peering around the doorway before stepping inside. There’s a fancy new camera here, too, and two toothbrushes and a tube of toothpaste perched on the edge of the sink. He tries the tap – no water. The toilet, too, is dry and clean. He frowns – he feels like that’s wrong, a foggy memory of last night backs him up, but perhaps that was a dream.

He picks up one of the brushes, but hesitates – what if there’s something in the toothpaste, like there was in the water? He puts it back. He would rather have stankmouth than get roofied again.

He returns to Rhett, aware of the gross fuzz on his tongue.

Rhett remains supine on the bed, and Link feels a prickle of worry down his neck. 

"Rhett?" Leaning over him, he smooths wild hair back from his best friend’s forehead. "Say something to me, brother. You okay?"

"My head," Rhett groans. "What did we drink last night?"

"Do you – do you remember where we are?" Oh God, Link doesn’t want him to have to go through the first day of this again. Rhett’s forehead creases up, brow furrowed as he rewinds his thoughts.

"The room. I couldn’t keep you awake," Rhett says eventually. Link gets a flash of remembered feelings from the words, and a load of embarrassment on top of that.  _ You were drugged _ , he thinks to himself.  _ You weren’t in your right mind _ . If he said anything dumb, he hopes neither of them can remember it. His hand goes automatically to adjust his glasses, tapping his nose awkwardly when they aren’t there.

"Is there an email?" Rhett asks. It takes Link a moment to understand what he means.

"I haven’t checked, sorry. There's a new camera, though." He points, and Rhett squints up at it.

The tablet is on the floor – has it been moved? He can’t remember what he did with it the day before. He turns it on, sitting next to Rhett. There is a new email.

"We slept a long time," he notes. The new email arrived twelve hours after the previous two, and who knows how long it has been sitting in the inbox.

To: a98j2034

From: theroom

Subject: Today’s tasks

> Good morning.
> 
> You have now completed your induction. Today will be considered day one. Any task not completed today will NOT roll over into day two.
> 
> Task One: Assign yourselves the title Subject One or Subject Two. Some tasks require actions to be taken by a specific subject. Once these titles have been assigned, they may not be altered for the remainder of your time here.
> 
> Rhett snorts – he’s reading over Links shoulder. "Someone’s been taking their high-school psychology classes too seriously. D’you think we’re a science fair project?"
> 
> Task Two: Subject Two slaps subject one. This will incur no punishment as an exception to the rules.

"I wanna be subject two," Link says quickly.

"No! Don’t claim it yet," Rhett’s voice is grim. 

The chime sounds, and Link’s stomach drops into his feet. 

"I - I didn’t mean that." He looks up to the camera. "It was instinct, we haven’t decided. Rhett —"

Rhett looks sick. "Read the next one."

> Task Three: Subject One masturbates in the shower

"That’s a joke," Link says. "It’s just a crappy joke, Rhett, they can’t make us do that."

"Who’s making  _ us _ , Link? I’m subject one, remember? Not you."

Shit, he’s going to throw up. "I didn’t know – I was just thinking back to the wheel prompts, I’m sorry."

"Not your fault." Rhett’s voice is clipped. 

It is, though, isn’t it?

"I’ll do it instead," Link says, the words so tight they’re almost inaudible, but Rhett gets to his feet.

"Didn’t you read the email? That’s not how it works."

Link tries to follow him – to stop him, obviously, but Rhett moves fast and the bathroom door shuts in his face.

"Rhett!" There is no response. He grabs the handle, and it starts to open, but on the other side Rhett slams it shut and leans his whole weight against it.

Link just stands there, until he realises it’s creepy to wait pressed against a door while your best friend jerks off on the other side. Instead, he retreats to the far side of the bed, and lies on the floor between it and the wall – it’s the closest thing to a confined space he’s got. Link has always enjoyed having somewhere small to creep away to – his hidey holes when he was small (or a fort, in Rhett speak) and the loft in the studio for napping. To trick his brain into thinking the space is tighter, he lies with his face close to the wall, breath condensing on the cool surface.

He isn’t going to cry, he decides. He’s already dehydrated, and besides – it’s not him who’s being forced into performing a sexual act on camera, is it?

And after Rhett’s humiliation, Link is going to have to slap him.

He groans, pulling his knees up to his chest.  _ He can’t do it _ . Not because he’s wimping out, but because it’s  _ Rhett _ . If the instruction was to hit himself, or the wall, or some other random person he’d do it. Not that he’d  _ want _ to, mind, but because Rhett had to do something way worse.

The wall isn’t helping, he’s just spiralling into increasingly desperate thoughts, so he sits up and grabs the tablet, scrolling back up to the rules. He closes one eye to read, a trick without his glasses to stem the growing strain and the headache that comes with it.

_ Failure to complete tasks will mean no reward. _

Which means if Link refuses, it affects them both. Will Rhett still be rewarded for completing his own task? Link would forfeit his own food and drink, if that was the case (his empty stomach protests at the idea), but it isn’t clear from the wording.

"Hey." He looks at the camera. It’s pointing at him. "What happens if one of us completes a task, and the other doesn’t?" He’s not really expecting an answer, but that doesn’t stop him getting angry when there’s no response.

He gets to his feet and squares up to it – as best he can when it’s attached to the ceiling several feet above his head, anyway. Link is not a big curser – it’s not how he was raised – and he saves those sorts of words only for certain situations.

This qualifies.

"What the  _ fuck _ is your plan, here?"

The camera looks back at him, emotionless. He thinks he can see movement as it auto-adjusts the focus, but it may just be a trick of his eyes.

"What’s the point of all this? Money? Is this a blackmail scheme, or a ransome? Are you gonna let us go when you’re done?"

He must look like a madman, standing in his boxers and shouting at the ceiling. He’s about to go again, but he stops. There’s something trapped in the camera’s housing, between the mount and the device itself – a strand of long dark hair.

It’s nothing that will help them in the immediate future, he thinks, but once they’re out of here (he refuses to think ‘if’, it can’t be  _ ‘if’ _ , and thinking of it as a mere possibility right now is a surefire route to a minor breakdown) it represents a whole lot. Forensics stuff – they can do things with hair, right? Find out who is doing this to them?

He stretches for it, fingertips wriggling, but it’s just out of reach.

_ Rhett would be able to reach it. _ He lingers on the thought, feeling reluctant. Rhett can do it, after he’s finished paying for one of Link’s mistakes. Before or after Link hits him?  _ Rhett’s the oldest, the tallest, the strongest. Rhett will fix it for you, Link. _

He jumps, cautiously, and his fingers swipe the end of the mount arm.  _ Yes _ . Encouraged, he jumps again, and this time he touches the hair itself, feels it brush his fingertips.

Back on the ground, he bends his knees, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Once more. He’s got this. 

Link launches himself into the air, arm punching up to grab the hair but missing its mark wildly. His hand impacts the metal joint of the mount, knuckle bone making contact with a protruding bolt in a sharp flash of pain. There’s a crack of plastic as he descends and doubles over, tucking his hand protectively to his chest as he doubles over, turning the air blue.

There is an unpleasant, discordant chime. It makes the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

The camera is still up there, and when he retreats to the bed it still follows him.  _ No permanent damage _ , he thinks.  _ Nothing catastrophic _ . The chime was just a warning. Right?

It’s another ten long minutes before Rhett emerges from the bathroom, and Link has calmed himself down. He keeps his hand tucked casually against his leg. Rhett will no doubt see it eventually, but he doesn’t need to right now, not after what he’s just been through.

"You okay?"

Rhett doesn’t sit on the bed, sinking to the floor instead, back resting against the wall. 

"Yup," he says. Link wants to go to him, but he doesn’t. This is the sort of situation where he knows that he should wait for Rhett to come to him. All the therapy in the world couldn’t take away his need to process the intense or traumatic alone.

(The exception to this is anything shared with Link — at least one of their near-death experiences together have ended in them clinging together for longer than they should, mushing together in Links memory the fear of dying and the feel of Rhett pressed against him.)

They spend a small age in miserable silence, but eventually Rhett breaks it.

"We should get your task over with, then."

"I don’t want to." 

"Yeah, well I didn’t want to jerk off for whatever sick person is behind those cameras, but I did. This is nothing." He slams his hands down on the mattress, making Link jolt. "Get up, Neal."

Link rolls upright, legs hanging over the edge. Standing, Rhett towers over him even more than usual. He smells of toothpaste. Behind the beard and the wild hair, his skin is pale and clammy-looking — a combination of stress and the reaction to the drugs that seemed so much worse than Link’s mild hangover.

Link swats at his stomach, hand floppy, barely hard enough to prompt a soft ‘ _ oof _ ’ from Rhett.

"Link," Rhett says, but his voice is softer than it’s been since he left the bathroom.

"I know." Link leans forward, resting his forehead on Rhett’s abs. It’s something he’d normally not dream of doing, and he feels Rhett stiffen up. 

_ Makin’ it awkward, as always. _ Too affectionate, too cuddly, too below-the-nipples. He turns it into a slight headbutt.

Rhett claps a hand on his upper arm, using it to urge him to his feet. They face each other.

"My right cheek, then?" Rhett asks, seeing Link wiggle the fingers of his left hand. "Told ya you’re a lefty, brother."

Link snorts, keeping his bruised right fist carefully curled out of the direct line of sight. He’s planning on pulling the slap as much as possible, but it has to be convincing.

"No hitting me back, remember the rules?" He dreads the sound of that other chime now. Rhett hasn’t mentioned it yet, but he must have heard it. He’d had other things to worry about at the time, of course.

"Don’t hold back," Rhett says firmly. "I’m not sharing my food with you if you don’t hit hard enough for them."

Link gives a curt nod, pulls his hand back and —  _ SLAP!  _ Rhett staggers on impact as his head jerks sideways. Link rushes to help steady him, but finds a hand shoved towards his chest, a wordless  _ stay back _ .

The happy chime sounds.

He’s going to throw up. 

Link heads for the bathroom, shutting the door behind him with a click. (Running away. _ Coward _ .) He knows he won’t actually vomit, but the idea that he might justifies him sitting on the toilet, staring at his feet.

This is a nightmare. He’s had nightmares with the same feeling of an unrelenting plummet into worse and worse circumstances — usually he’s at the top of a slope on his mountain bike and his brakes fail, and all he can do is steer as he rolls faster and faster along a rocky path that gets steeper and steeper. Eventually his steering goes too, and —

_ THUD. _

What was that sound? A heavy thump, like something weighty hitting the floor in the next room.

Rhett? He waits for another noise, but hears nothing.

"Rhett?"  _ Nothing _ .

When he grabs the door handle, it won’t twist. It’s stuck. He shakes it, but it’s so firm it won’t even rattle in its housing. For the first time, he takes in how sturdy the door is, not like a bathroom door at all — almost industrial. Secure.

Not stuck, he realises with devastating horror.  _ Locked. _

_ Acts of violence or sabotage will result in punishment. _

What’s a more effective way to punish Link, than to hurt his best friend?

There is a muffled, unmistakable cry.

" _ RHETT!"  _ he shouts, hammering on the door, hitting with both hands, the bruised one screaming along with him.

Another pained shout makes it through the dividing wall, and Link throws himself at the door over and over until he’s exhausted. Sliding to the floor, he scrabbles at the rubbery seal that fills the gap between the door and the floor, but it’s impervious to his bitten nails.

"Stop hurting him!" He shouts, over and over. "He didn’t do anything wrong!"

Rhett’s agonised cries dwindle until Link hears nothing but unbearable silence.

Somehow, that silence is a thousand times worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Okay, that cliffhanger is mean, even for me - there will be a fresh update tomorrow!)


	4. Tremors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Want some comfort with that hurt?

He doesn’t know how long he’s sat there for. He barely registers the  _ clunk _ of the lock disengaging.

The handle twists. His turn, is it? If he feels anything at all, it’s relief. He’s blocking the door from opening properly the way he’s sitting, it only opens a crack.

"Link? You okay in there? You’ve been a while. I tried knocking."

He blinks hazily at the tile.

"Link, if you don’t answer me I’m coming in. So get your underwear on, if it ain't already."

It sounds like Rhett. Like Rhett when he’s worried, sure, but not a Rhett who’s been screaming from physical pain.

He crawls back from the door, suddenly frightened of who might come through it. He knows what he heard.  _ He knows _ , but it’s at total odds with what he  _ sees _ when Rhett steps inside and there’s not a mark on him, except the redness of his cheek from Link’s hand.

It feels like his brain is lagging, he can’t do anything but stare. The other man is speaking, but it’s like he’s talking into a vacuum and the words don’t make it all the way to Link’s ears.

It doesn’t make sense. He  _ knows _ what he heard.

Rhett hunkers down in front of him. Link keeps staring, latched onto his eyes and unable to let go while Rhett expresses concern with his hands, tilting Link’s head side to side, checking under his hair and finding no injury. His attention turns to Link’s own hands. They both hurt now, not just the one he hit the camera with. Rhett looks to the bottom of the door, then back to Link’s torn up nails. All the while he’s talking, and Link wishes he could hear what he’s saying.

_ I should be the one taking care of  _ him, he thinks muzzily.  _ Someone hurt him _ . His hands reach out clumsily, doing his own check of Rhett's person. All he finds is an old bruise, then there’s half-dried blood smudged across his arm – but that’s from Links fingers, he realises before the panic can overwhelm him again. 

"What’d they do?" he asks. Speaking aloud seems to realign something in his brain, because his hearing pops back on just in time for him to cringe away at the sound of The Voice.

"-- water in the bathroom will be activated for one hour. Food and drink will arrive shortly."

"Hey, hey. Ignore that, just focus on me." Rhett’s hands settle, one on either shoulder. "Link, focus on me. That’s it." 

"They hurt you?" Link had been so sure before, but now it’s a question. His voice hurts, and he sounds raspy and not at all like himself.

"No, I’m okay." Rhett is frowning, confused.

"They did," Link tries to explain. "I heard it. The door was locked, and I heard it, I heard  _ you _ screaming." God, he sounds like he’s lost the plot, doesn’t he?. "I’m not  _ crazy _ ," he adds. Totally what a person in his right mind would say, right?

"Link." Rhett is speaking to him oh-so-quietly, voice gentle. "I’m pretty sure both rooms are soundproofed. I couldn’t hear a thing – and look at the seal around the door, buddy."

Rubber sealed. "Like the recording studio," Link mumbles. There are red smears across the lower third of the door, too, and some on the floor. He looks at his hands, then away again when he gets lightheaded. "I hurt my fingers."

"Yeah, you did. Come on, up you get – over to the sink."

He wants a drink – he’s so _ thirsty _ – but Rhett tugs his hands under the stream of water, trying to get the worst of the blood off. He lingers a little on the right side, where Link’s first and second knuckles are turning purple and black.

"D’you think I was hearing things?" he asks, unable to hold the idea back any longer. "Be honest with me, am I losing it?" They both know he’d be the first of them to crack.

"I think," Rhett says slowly, "that you’re majorly stressed and it’s a possibility. But," he put extra emphasis on the word, and one hand squeezes Link’s wrist. " _ But,  _ I also think that we host a show on the internet, so if someone wanted to mess with your head they have a decade of video clips to work with, and I’ve hollered on camera a fair few times, right? I mean, the shock cane alone …"

It’s … it's possible, Link supposes. It’s certainly preferable to him hallucinating the whole thing.

"They did it because I hit the camera," Link confesses. "It was an accident." He leans in close, whispering to tell Rhett about the trapped hair.

"Thinkin’ ahead, huh?" Rhett says, but there’s a pleased gleam in his eye that gives Link a rush of contentment.  _ I put that there _ .

"You gonna be okay on the bed by yourself for a while?" Rhett asks, when Links hands are satisfactorily clean. "I really need that shower."

"Sure, I think I can manage." Link aims for sarcastic, but doesn’t quite make it out of genuine. He’s steady on his feet, though, and makes it out of the room without making a fool of himself.

He hesitates.

"Rhett?"

"Yeah?"

"Can you keep the door open? I won’t look, or anythin’. I just …" he trails off. 

"I can do that," Rhett says, and Link sits on the bed and focuses on the sound of the water, and nothing else.

  
  


There’s more food this time; ham and cheese sandwiches that have gone a little dry, the bread curling at the edges but perfectly edible, and a ziploc bag of animal crackers. 

Link sucks his water bottle dry, and hopes guiltily that it might be drugged again. He senses that sleep won’t come easy if it isn’t. Even with the lights on and wide awake, he keeps getting flashes of Rhett crying out in pain. He runs his fingers over the rough cotton of the bed, and tries not to think about how, if those sounds  _ weren’t _ real, that’s two senses he can’t rely on anymore.

Half an hour later he’s still conscious, so he goes and re-fills the bottles from the cistern, only pausing for a moment at the bathroom threshold.

"Last call!" he says with a sardonic half-grin at Rhett around the doorframe, before flushing the toilet.

They’d spent the rest of the day – or what they assumed was ‘day’, given that they had no access to a clock – in quiet companionship, sometimes talking, mostly silent. What conversation they did make was always strictly mundane and inconsequential by unspoken agreement.

They play maximum difficulty i-spy for an hour (Rhett spies ‘L-B-T’ for ‘Link’s big toe’ and then ‘T’ for the miniscule tardigrades he promised were crawling over the carpet, and it’s not against the rules as they are technically visible if one uses a microscope. Link gets him back with ‘B’ for boredom, which they agreed after was most definitely present and easily discernible on both of their faces.) and then ‘what song am I humming?’ for at least another two. Having resumed their game after eating, Link is struggling to think of something to hum on his next turn when, without warning, the lights in both rooms go out.

"Guess that means bedtime," Rhett says, an invisible presence in the blackness. The only light is the small dot of red on the ceiling camera.

Link finds the edge of the bedsheet by touch, wriggling under it while Rhett assumes the stiff corpse-like position he prefers whenever they have to share a mattress.

"Hey Link?" The dark makes him seem far away, so Link shifts minutely closer, covering it with a cough. He can just about feel the suggestion of Rhett’s body heat, and it’s more comforting than he’d like to admit.

"Yeah?" 

"Are you – how’re you holding up?" He was obviously going to ask if he was okay, but changed it at the last moment. Link appreciates the modification; neither of them are okay.

"I’m doin’ better," he says. "I was really scared earlier."

"Me too," Rhett confesses. Link wonders if he means his task, or finding link in such a stupid state in the bathroom. He nearly jumps when Rhett’s hand seeks out his under the covers, squeezing it once, strong and warm, before retreating back to isolation on his side of the bed.

Link feels greedy when he wishes it had stayed.

Just as he predicted, sleep eludes him for far longer than normal.

It’s so quiet, none of the sounds he’s used to at night, not the hum of the AC unit or passing traffic. He listens to Rhett breathe, trying to pretend it’s just a weird hotel room on their tour route, and when that fails he plays  _ is-Rhett-awake-too? _ , counting the seconds in and out, analysing each sniff and shuffle of movement. Rhett eventually ruins it by letting out a soft snore.

Unable to distract himself any longer, Link’s thoughts turn to his family. They’ll be worried, obviously, but he hopes they are less frightened than he is. Neither of them were injured when they were taken, wherever it happened, so at least there wouldn’t have been anything too scary like blood at the scene. Christie will tell the kids he’d never leave them by choice, of course. That’s important, so important – Link knows well the feelings of abandonment that come with a parent leaving, and  _ his  _ dad didn’t disappear off the face of the earth.

He runs through their nightly routine, every boring detail of it, as if he’s doing it in real-time. Putting Jade to bed in her crate, saying goodnight to Lincoln’s door and telling Lily not to stay up too late, Lando wriggling when he blows a raspberry on his forehead in lieu of a goodnight kiss.

Brow furrowed, Link falls asleep studiously imagining Christie curled up against him, holding her tight and pretending he’d never have to wake up without her again. 

[Day Two]

> To: a98j2034
> 
> From: theroom
> 
> Subject: Today’s tasks
> 
> Good morning.
> 
> The door is unlocked. Retrieve the boxes containing today's tasks.
> 
> Task one: Subject One must eat the contents of box one.
> 
> Task two: Subject Two must eat the contents of box two.
> 
> Task three: Subject Two must read the contents of box three aloud.

Link groans. "Reading! Just what my head needs, because it’s not splitting already."

Rhett is on the floor stretching. He sits up with a grunt; Link winces at the clicking that comes from his spine. He stretches out a long arm and wiggles his fingers at Link. "Grab a hold, brother."

"What? Oh." The door, of course. Now more than ever they don’t trust it not to lock between them.

The boxes are small, and Rhett scoots them toward the door with his feet when picking them up one-handed proves awkward.

There’s an all-too familiar smell coming from box one, and Rhett raises an eyebrow when he opens the lid and peers inside.

"Fans of the show, then." He shows Link the pack of cooked chicken livers. "Who knew they come in economy size? Open yours, bet you one sip of my toilet water it’s tomatoes."

Link gives him a dirty look, and opens the box.

"I was right, wasn’t I?"

Wordlessly, Link passes his water bottle. "Just don’t backwash it." He watches closely as Rhett makes a big dramatic show of taking a gulp.

"You said sip, not chug!" Link grabs for it, narrowly avoiding spilling the whole thing. Rhett jams the cap on and holds it at arm's length, and Link nearly tackles him to get it back, before remembering that they’re practically naked besides their boxers, so … maybe not.

"You first, box number one," he prompts.

Rhett looks at him, betrayed. "Not together? We could pretend it was for the show."

The look Link gives him is highly skeptical. 

"Say we drew playing a game. Matching the crew to their favourite foods – you messed up on Stevie –"

"I  _ know _ Stevie’s favourite food."

"You _ thought _ you did, but it turns out it’s …" here Rhett pauses, presumably to come up with something sufficiently absurd. "... just the green side of red-and-green apples."

" _ What?" _

"I knew it, of course, because we always go apple picking at the weekend. But I got Jordan’s wrong –"

"Jordan’s favourite food," Link cuts in with a flash of stupid inspitration, "is cold vegan burgers with too much ranch dressing."

"How was I ever going to guess that?" Rhett says, with exaggerated dismay. "So, now we both have to eat the loser prize, which is our own  _ least  _ favourite foods, obviously."

Link sighs. "Better get this over then, at least it’ll get the views, right?"

"That’s the spirit."

"I’m not dinkin’ your nasty liver, though, Tomatoes are bad enough."

For all Rhett’s messing around, he has a harder time than Link getting even the first mouthful down. Maybe it’s just that Link’s eaten them so many times on the show, or maybe there’s a tiny subliminal sliver of tolerance left over from his hypnosis session. Whatever the reason, he manages not to go further than a slight gagging every time he bites into a new tomato like an apple, and juice trickles down his chin.

"Why are there so many?" he groans on tomato number six, about halfway through his box.

"Urk," Rhett agrees, pausing to retch miserably into a paper bag that had been helpfully provided.

Their captors must have watched the show, Link thinks, or at least read the wiki.

For once, he finishes eating before Rhett, and goes about opening box number three with suitable trepidation. From the way today is going, he’s probably gonna have to read some explicit fanfiction out loud, which will be embarrassing, but nothing that hasn’t gone around the office a million times already. So he’s surprised when he tips up the box and a leatherbound book drops out.  _ The Book of Psalms _ .

"I hope you haven’t read the Psalter recently," he says to Rhett. "Cus you’re going to be hearing it again for the rest of the day." He assumes he has to read the whole thing. How long is that going to take? Flicking through the delicate pages, he cringes internally at the tiny font, brain giving a preemptive throb. "Better get to it, I guess."

There’s a name written on the front endpaper, in blue ink so faded it must have been there for decades.  _ Agnes _ . That’s an old lady name if he ever heard one. He can’t imagine that an old lady is the one running this outfit – the culprits probably picked it up at a yard sale.

"Benedictions, Book One," he begins, and Rhett legs it to the bathroom to retch noisily into the toilet bowl.

Book one is a slog. He sings the hymns he knows, and makes up tunes to some of the ones he doesn’t just to save himself from the monotony. 

Book two is shorter, but his speed is cut as his eyes become sore. Rhett finishes his liver midway through the Miserere, which Link finds hilariously appropriate.

He takes a short break and finishes his water before book three, which is the shortest of the five. He recognises Psalm 82, but he can’t put a finger on where from – a funeral, he thinks, maybe back when he was a kid.

By book four, he’s losing his voice. He’s long stopped comprehending the meaning of anything he’s reading; it’s like he’s simply a conduit that the words travel through to get into the air. Rhett sits next to him, holding up the book and turning the pages, even tilting it at an odd angle so Link can rest his head on Rhett's shoulder.

Book five, Psalm 143, is when his voice gives out completely. He coughs, tries again. He’s  _ so close _ and it’s so unfair if after four hours of reading he falls at this last hurdle. Rhett puts a hand on his forearm and takes over in his low, soothing voice for the remaining seven. Link keeps mouthing the words along with him, and the room must appreciate that it’s the best they can do, as the chime sounds on the final ‘praise the LORD’ of Psalm 150.

The water is turned on, and this time Link goes first. He’s never been so tired from reading, feeling the bone deep ache that he normally associates with the end of a live show, only he doesn’t also get the giddy/anxious joy that comes with it. Now, there’s just a vaguely sad nostalgia for the days when he used to find comfort in Bible verses.

The shower massages his scalp; at least the water pressure is decent in their little prison. It’s hot, too, he lets it get to just this side of scalding for his second rinse, rolling his shoulders and feeling the heat sink deep into his muscles.

Unbidden, the memory of Rhett lying beside him pops into the forefront of his mind, the sensation of his long fingers wrapping around Link’s own.

_ Nope, none of that _ ! He pushes the thought away. That is not shower thoughts material. Unfortunately, his brain seems to take this as a challenge; presenting him with the memory from the first day after their arrival in the room, Rhett holding him in a mostly naked hug on the bathroom floor; how safe Link felt, how  _ surrounded _ and small.

_ No!  _ Nope nope  _ nope _ , not now. The bathroom door is open a crack – for Links peace of mind, ironically – and he slaps his hands to cover his crotch. There’s no glass around the shower, what with it being a wet room – probably for the benefit of the camera, he thinks sourly, and he turns his back on it to glower down at the burgeoning  _ issue _ between his legs.

"You have got nothing to be perky about," he mutters at it, bracing himself and twisting the shower knob to cold. He focuses on the chill of the water and the headache pounding behind his eyes until the problem rights itself.

"I was beginning to think I wasn’t getting a turn in there," Rhett says, when Link returns to the room, shivering. "You left me any hot water?"

" _ Plenty _ ," he grits out, and grabs for the sheet.

"Not when you’re still wet! What happened to those natural squeegees?" So, Rhett  _ had _ been paying attention to his shower talk.

"I didn’t want to eat into your time any further." His boxers are sticking to his damp skin unpleasantly, and he’s pretty sure there’s not a inch where he’s not all goosepimply. He eyes the carpet, considering just getting down and rolling on it, but in the end elects to just bounce around until he dries. 

By the time Rhett is done, Link is wrapped up in the sheet and wishing the lights would switch out already, hoping that this isn’t the lead-up to a migraine, because that would suck big time. He just wants to sleep.

"Door’s open," Rhett points out, and so it is. Link glares at it. When did that happen?

"I’m not hungry." All he feels in the stomach area is nausea from all the tomatoes earlier.

"Doesn’t look like there’s food anyway." 

Link jumps to his feet when Rhett walks to the door and peers through, suddenly afraid he’s just going to go on out without the safety rope of Link’s hand.

Rhett smirks. "Thought so."

"It’s not paranoia if they’ve done it once already," Link reminds him. Rhett grabs his hand and leaves the room. He rolls the normal two bottles of water over, then grabs the bundle that’s there instead of food this time. 

They dissect it on the carpet; a large soft blanket that Rhett immediately winds around his shoulders ("You’ve got the bedsheet, it’s only fair.") and a folded paper bag containing – 

"Oh, thank God." – Link’s glasses. 

He unfolds them and puts them on. Of course they can’t fix his headache instantly, and there’s probably a fair amount of placebo effect going on, but he swears he feels a pressure in his head release. 

"I’m never taking these off again," he croaks. "It’ll leave weird imprints on my face when I sleep, but I think I can pull that off, right?"

He has to fight the urge to thank whoever is behind the camera for returning them.  _ They took them in the first place, you don't owe them anything _ . The last thing he needs is some weird sort of Stockholm syndrome cropping up. Can you even get that, when there’s just a camera and a robot voice?

There’s some debate over the blanket and the sheet. Rhett lobbies for them having one each to eliminate any hogging that might go on, and to potentially curb Link’s unconscious migration urges. Link agrees with this in theory, but only if he’s the one who gets the blanket.

"You can double the sheet up," Rhett points out. "There’s more of me to get cold, so I should have the blanket."

Eventually, they agree to swap out each night.

"So don’t sweat all over it and make it nasty," Link warns as he curls up burrito-style in the thin sheet, only his face poking out the end.

The lights turn out five minutes later, and thankfully he passes easier into sleep this time. He dreams of being backstage at a tour show, trying to find his way to the stage through a maze of dark corridors full of disapproving house managers, all of whom have cold black camera lenses for eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that cliffhanger resolution wasn't a let down! We've still got a way to go yet.   
> Next update won't be out quite as soon as the previous ones, and I'll be slowing the update schedule a little. My normal beta/SO (hiii Butthead!) has just discovered that this fic exists and was outraged I hadn't asked her to edit, so the next chapter might possibly be more grammatically sound if she's forgiven me.


	5. Faultline

[Day Three]

"You ate five ounces of liver, and  _ this  _ is where you draw the line?" Link is nearly – no, Link is  _ actually _ offended. "You realise I’m the one who won’t get food and water if you don’t let me do it, right?"

"Then you can have mine." Rhett’s arms are folded, his shoulders hunched, his whole posture screaming  _ back off _ . "I’m not letting you do it, I don’t want to catch your  _ condition _ ."

"It’s a virus," Link snaps. "And  _ bullcrap _ . I’m not having an outbreak, although I’m goddamned stressed enough to trigger one, and you were fine with sharing a water bottle yesterday. This isn’t about herpes and you know it."

Rhett tosses the tablet face up onto the bed, the email responsible for their argument, sitting there innocently like it hadn’t just pulled the trigger on World War Three.

> Task two: Subject Two kisses Subject One

"I’m not having this argument with you."

"It’s just a kiss, man. The wording isn’t even specific – I mean, I’m assuming a peck on the cheek won’t fly, but it’s not like I’mma stick my tongue down your throat."

Rhett just ignores him, stretching his legs before pressing his back to the wall and sliding down into the position shown on the diagram attached for task one. He looks like he’s sitting in an invisible chair; Link’s legs throb in sympathetic agony. He doesn’t know how Rhett plans on counting the two hours he has to stay in position, but right now he’s too annoyed to care. After all the tasks they’ve had to do so far, they should have been happy to be given such an easy victory.

_ If it’s a struggle for anyone, it should be me _ , he thinks. He’s the one who has always vetoed crew suggestions for the wheel involving any lip-to-skin action, an instinct he has never examined too closely, but recognises as one of safeguarding himself from that hot thing that awakens in his stomach sometimes unexpectedly when Rhett clasps a hand on his shoulder or jostles him in a playful grown-up approximation of their childhood roughhousing.

Rhett continues to ignore him, thighs trembling and sweat sitting shiny on his forehead. The stress of the position would probably give Link an edge in an argument, but even as frustrated as he is with the guy, that feels like it would plunge across the line from ‘unfair’ and travel several yards into ‘cruel’ territory. So he ignores him right back.

He’s sure that the two hours are done multiple times over, but Rhett keeps going until the chime allows him to collapse onto the floor, and Link can’t exactly confront him after that, can he? So instead he fetches Rhett the last of the previous day’s water, and even splashes a little into his cupped hands so that he can wash his face.

_ Probably not gonna be a shower tonight _ , he thinks.  _ He’s gonna stink _ .

They talk about random shared memories from their childhoods as Rhett gently stretches out the cricks in his back and the stiff, cramping pains in his legs. He’s so good at reawakening the days Link has forgotten, bringing them so close he can smell the lawn clippings, feel the late summer heat sticking to his skin. Link could listen to him for hours – and he does, interjecting with his own memories or disputing the odd misrecollection on Rhett’s behalf.

The day passes, presumably. He’s getting used to feeling hungry, but yesterday’s tomatoes (ew) feel more than twenty-four hours away now.

“I don’t think we’re getting any food.  _ Or  _ water.” If it sounds a bit like an accusation, well. He can’t really help it.

“We will," Rhett says stubbornly. He’s got that look in his eye that Link knows means he won’t budge.

When lights out arrives, proving Link correct, Rhett says nothing. Link snatches the blanket and lies facing the wall. Even in his sleep, he stays there.

[Day Four]

There is only one task in the email this time.

> Subject One makes out with Subject Two

"Great," Link says. "They’ve upped the ante."

"You happy now?" They’ve both woken up in foul moods, but Rhett’s words elicit a shock of dizzying anxiety that makes Link physically jerk. 

"What’s that supposed to mean?"

"Well, you like being right, don’t you?"

Really? _ Really?  _ "Oh, fuck off. Because I’m so concerned with that right now. Not everyone is as obsessed with  _ winning  _ as you, Rhett." He can’t believe they’re having  _ this _ argument right now.

Rhett says something back, probably some joke about Link never winning anything – they’ve had this spat so many times that Link knows it by heart, and he’s not listening anymore. Anger is building up in him like a roaring white mass in the pressure cooker conditions of his brain. He manages to clamp down on it, and probably would have kept it up had Rhett not kept talking.

"Why are you so eager for me to kiss you, anyway?" Rhett is lashing out. They know each other too well, each of them holds an unconscious list of the other’s insecurities and fears. They’ve never had a physical fight – they’ve never needed to.

"I’m not," Link says. He’s so mad he’s shaking. "I just don’t get why  _ this  _ is where you’ve drawn your line, when you were a-okay getting yourself off on camera on what, day one?" He laughs, sharp and bitter. "And the fans think  _ I’m _ the kinky one."

It doesn’t feel good, seeing Rhett’s face go from the angry flush to sickly pale the way it does. Not even for a second – the words leave his mouth and  _ bam _ , white-hot shame.

Rhett stares at him, his mouth a barely visible tense line under his beard.

For the first time in his life, Link thinks Rhett is actually going to hit him.

He doesn’t. He just turns his back on Link and goes into the bathroom. He doesn’t even close the door. 

Link retreats to his space between the bed and the wall. He’s said a lot of stupid in his time, he’d be the first to admit, but he’s never actually appalled himself before, not in this way.

_ You’re sick. You are  _ sick _ , Link Neal _ . All of this, because Rhett won’t kiss him?  _ Even if he agreed to it, it wouldn’t be because he wanted to _ , he reminds himself. God, his head is messed up.

With the anger drained from his system, he wants, more than anything else _ ,  _ not to hurt Rhett. But it’s too late for that now.

He finds himself standing at the bathroom door again, not really aware of getting back up.

"Don’t come in here, Link." Rhett’s voice sounds carefully even.

Link's tongue feels solid in his mouth.

"I’m sorry," he says. "I can’t tell you how sorry I am." 

Rhett says nothing – and that’s encouraging, actually. When Rhett isn’t talking, that usually means he’s listening.

"No matter how mad I was," Link says hesitantly, "I never should have implied that you – that was wrong of me. I never believed it, I just said it, and that makes it worse, doesn’t it? Um …" He lets out a heavy sigh, pushing his glasses up and twisting his fingers in his hair, trying to find the right words. They continue to evade him. 

"I can’t expect you to forgive me for that. Just … know that I’m sorry. I’ll give you whatever space you need, as much as possible stuck in this room, anyway. But I am here for you, not just ’cus I can’t get away. Even though after that, it probably doesn’t seem like it." He’s rambling now, so with effort he cuts himself off.

Rhett doesn’t come out of the bathroom. Link spends the day rereading  _ Psalms _ just for something to do, and when the words stop making sense he closes his eyes and plays Christy’s favourite album all the way from track one in his head. When the lights switch off, he lays out the blanket on the bed for Rhett, and sleeps with his own pillow and the sheet on the floor. He stays awake until he hears the creak of the bed frame and the rustle of Rhett tucking in for the night.

He barely falls asleep before the noise starts. His thoughts are just beginning to distort into dreams, when he’s nudged back to consciousness by a high-pitched whine.

_ Mosquito _ , he thinks at first. How did it get in? He sits up. The whine hasn’t changed pitch or intensity – not a mosquito, then. Probably not something natural. He glances at the spot of light that is the camera in the dark. It, too, is unchanged.

He shakes his head. Could be his sinuses? The noise creeps slowly up in volume.

"Rhett?" he whispers. He’s not sure if Rhett is awake or not, and if he’s sleeping he doesn’t want to disturb him.

"I can hear it." Rhett’s voice is loud in the pitch darkness.

Link lies back on the floor. When the room is this dark, his eyes make up patchy shapes and vague images out of the darkness. It reminds him of the isolation tank, only less comforting. He wonders if Rhett sees his ancient faces again, and hopes he doesn’t. He feels watched enough as it is, and he can’t imagine Rhett would like even more eyes on him.

Without warning, the whine cuts out. Link sinks tentatively into the silence, eyes closing, body relaxing in increments. This time, though, he doesn’t get near sleep when it starts up again. He hears Rhett mutter something, then what he imagines to be him shoving his head under the pillow.

The whine only gets louder. Every five minutes or so it cuts off, before coming back again, disrupting any progress made into sleep. It doesn't take long to realise that that is precisely its purpose.  _ Sleep deprivation. _ He’s pretty sure that’s an actual form of torture.

[Day Five]

When the lights come on, making it morning, Link has that dazed ‘but it’s still yesterday’ feeling that comes with a sleepless night – not something he’s experienced often, not since Lando was small and new. The whine loses volume but remains present in the background, switching on and off at irregular intervals.. 

He looks over at Rhett, only to find the other man staring at him, also groggy and sporting massive bags beneath his eyes. Rhett looks away. 

"Email?" Link asks. Rhett just shrugs. Link locates the tablet on the floor, and his stomach sinks when he reads it.

> Subject One kisses Subject Two.

"How many days can you go without water?" he asks aloud. Privately, he thinks the lack of sleep will kill him first. 

Rhett stares listlessly at the ceiling. "Average human is three days." He’s always a reliable source for the apocalyptically grim. "But a lot factors into it."

Link wonders if his own, nearly compulsive, water-drinking habits put him in a better or worse stead, and if Rhett’s size makes him retain water longer or use it up faster.

"What do they want now, then? What’s the next base up from making out?"

Rather than answer, Link sticks the screen in front of his face. Rhett’s eyebrows go up.

"Huh. They’re backing off a bit."

Link’s stomach sinks. "I don’t know that they’ll go any better than this," he says, expecting Rhett to argue that they see what happens after another day of refusing to do anything.

_ Why are you so eager for me to kiss you, anyway?  _ Link tries to ignore the memory of Rhett’s words from the previous day, but his brain seems intent on sticking them in the forefront of his mind.  _ Thanks for that, brain _ . 

He doesn’t want Rhett to _ have _ to kiss him. He – he wants Rhett to kiss him because Rhett  _ wants _ to kiss him, and that is a major difference.

"I had an idea for a song last night," Rhett says, like Link isn’t teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. He struggles to reply around the mental whiplash.

"Yeah?" he manages.

"Want to hear it?" Rhett is delaying, giving himself time to think. Which means he’s not  _ not  _ going to go through with it. It’s an improvement on yesterday, anyway.

They work on Rhett’s song, giving it more of a percussive bent than they would with access to instruments. Link finds it unexpectedly meditative, patting out a beat on the boxspring with one cupped palm, tapping a plastic bottle against his thigh with the other. He’s so focused on counting and keeping beat there’s no room in his head for anything else.

When they eventually stop and Link remembers where they are, he still feels a little bit lighter.

"In the rules email, it almost sounded like we could choose  _ not _ to complete a task, y’know?" Rhett says out of the blue. "But we don’t have a choice, do we?"

Link feels like he shouldn’t be as relieved as he is to hear that. He is really hungry, though, and tired, and he’s gonna just stand under the showerhead with his mouth open rather than bother with water bottles.

"I get that feeling," he says. "So."

"Right." Rhett shuffles awkwardly. "Standing?"

_ Shit _ . He takes it all back, Link would rather starve to death or … he doesn’t know, be  _ buried alive _ than do this right now. His breath is probably gross – there’s only so much a finger-brushing can do for a guy – and he’s all stubbly and tired-looking, and he gets twitchy when he’s anxious, and Rhett is gonna think he’s a bad kisser for the rest of their lives, because let’s face it, this is probably Link’s only shot.

"Just breathe before you turn blue," Rhett says. "I ain’t mackin’ on a corpse for all the cereal bars in the world."

They stand there, face to face.  _ Too close _ , Link thinks instinctively. _ Danger zone _ . He notes absently that the whine hasn’t returned from its latest bout of silence, and he feels irrationally compelled to giggle.

"Stop licking your lips, man, that’s gross," Rhett scolds him.

"Just lubin’ them up, I don’t want them cracking."

"D’you have to say lube?" Rhett looks pained. 

"Sorry. I mean like, car lube. For cars. Not for anything else. Not sex lube." 

"Stop digging, man, just stop." His hands settle in Link’s shoulders. They are sweaty, and feel bigger than he remembers. "So like … contact, five seconds, pull back?" They’re planning it like a shoot, like planning ahead when something is gonna be particularly hard to get down, the old ‘ _ chew chew chew, swallow _ ’ technique.

"Yeah, okay," he says, and he’s still trying to get his head around the fact that this is about to happen when Rhett’s face is suddenly all up in his.

It’s a terrible kiss. Rhett goes in with too much force, Link is underprepared. Their mouths don’t meet as much as collide, and Link’s upper lip gets crushed painfully against his teeth in a way that’s definitely gonna leave a bruise and oh  _ God _ if he gets a flare-up after he kisses Rhett he’s gonna just lie down and die okay?

He even still has his eyes open, which is weird – especially when Rhett has his screwed so tightly shut, lips moving against Link’s (which seem to be frozen in place whilst the rest of him spontaneously combusts).

Then it’s over. It’s probably the worst kiss of Link’s life (which is saying something) and he's actually angry about it. Angry at himself, for being an idiot; at whoever is behind those cameras, for obvious reasons; at Rhett, for ruining Link’s kiss.

But, he notices with alarm, it has An Effect. Quite a considerable  _ An Effect _ , which is going to be humiliatingly visible in a second when they step away from each other, which Rhett is doing  _ right now _ .

Link bolts for the bathroom, and slams the door closed behind him. 

The chime sounds.

This isn’t happening.  _ This is not happening! _ It wasn’t even a nice kiss – and even if it had been, he’s not a teenager anymore. It takes more than a brief lip-lock to get him going.

He focuses on breathing, standing under the dry showerhead, hunched over, one hand on the wall to steady himself. The shower should be on soon. It’ll be nice – a nice,  _ cold  _ shower.

His erection makes his boxers uncomfortably tight. Why couldn’t he have been kidnapped whilst wearing one of his more comfortable, slightly-too-big pairs? Actually, why does he even  _ own  _ boxers that aren’t one hundred percent comfortable? As soon as he gets home, after he’s done hugging his family, he’s culling all his tight or itchy or oddly shaped pairs, no matter how wasteful it feels.

Why won’t they hurry up and turn the water on? His skin is crawling with angry heat and the memory of Rhett’s damp hands on his skin. His lip is smarting, and when he prods at it with his tongue it feels swollen. Did Rhett’s teeth leave a visible mark? The thought makes his cock twitch. He knows he’s a blushing mess, that the camera will see the flush spreading down his back. He’s facing away from it for the small illusion of privacy that offers. Does it look like he’s furtively jerking off, though? 

There’s still no sign of the water coming on.

What if Rhett is worried that Link is locked in here again, and comes to check on him? It’s not an unlikely scenario, and while in his mind the concept is horrific, apparently his body had an entirely different opinion.

_ Think of nasty stuff _ . Tomatoes. Liver. The decomposing opossum Jade found in the park that one time. Rhett in a kiddie pool covered in fish blood and other gross stuff. (Rhett’s face up close, scrunched in disgust because he’s kissing Link.)

Instead of getting turned off, Link just finds himself getting angrier and  _ still _ sporting a raging hard-on. It’s probably his body craving human contact and comfort, he theorises. An out-letting of all that stress and anxiety.

Fuck it. The longer he’s here fighting it, the more likely it is Rhett will come check on him and see something that neither of them ( _ liar _ ) wants him to see. The fastest way to deal with this problem is, well. To ‘deal with it’ (inverted commas, a knowing look straight down the camera, wait for Rhett to hurriedly lead the discussion in another direction). 

Before his high of frustration and anger can dissipate and reveal what a horrible idea this is, Link shoves a hand inside his boxers, grasping himself with an overwhelming shudder.

There are any number of things he  _ could _ think about, and plenty that he  _ should _ be picturing as he jerks off. None of those are Rhett – his hands, the soft scratch of his beard, the crinkles at the corners of his eyes, the way that when he  _ really  _ laughs it’s with his whole body, and how his arms are long enough to wrap all the way around when he hugs Link close. 

But hey. That’s just what comes to mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! This was beta'd by the most excellent Bowyer, who lovingly massacred my chronic overwriting. Thanks bab :)  
> Next update should be either Monday or Tuesday. Thanks for all the lovely comments and kudos -- this is my first fic in this fandom (and my first time writing RPF) and it has been a great experience so far.


	6. Sleepless

Link cleans up with toilet tissue, because the water doesn’t come back on. Is Rhett gonna know what he did in here? Does it smell?  _ He _ smells like he hasn’t washed, mostly, he thinks. They both do, thanks to Rhett losing their shower privileges two days prior. He tosses the tissue in the dry toilet bowl.

Maybe their reward will be clean underwear. Ugh.

He’s loitering, reluctant to go back into the room: fussing with his hair while being glad there isn’t a mirror – he’s not sure what he’d see if he looked at himself right now. 

_ DING _ . 

He freezes. It’s the good chime, but what for?

It’s not because he – it’s not that. That hadn’t been a task, there had only been the one task today and the chime for that sounded earlier.

He marches to the door, throwing it open.

"Did you just do something?" he asks, coming out snappier than he meant it. 

Rhett is sitting on the floor, knees bent and back hunched, and he jumps when Link bursts out. His eyes are reddened, like he might have been crying. "No? I’ve just been sitting here. My eyes are itchy."

"Well don’t blame me, you can’t get eye herpes," Link says, pre-emptively defensive. He feels transparent, like Rhett can see right through the front he’s putting up – or maybe what he just did is written on his face. Either way, he hates being so exposed, and he’s prepared to surround himself with stings and barbs to stop Rhett from looking too close. 

Rhett doesn’t take the bait. "What made you think I did something?"

Link wants to say ‘ _ didn’t you hear it? _ ’, but after his previous episode in the bathroom he’s more than a little worried about sounding like he’s hearing stuff.  _ Soundproofing,  _ he reminds himself.  _ Seperate speakers in the bathroom _ . 

Which means it was something  _ he  _ did that the chime was for.

There had been a line in the rules, hadn’t there? ‘Bonus tasks may be completed at the room’s discretion.’ Was jerking off a bonus task?  _ More like a boner task, amiright _ ? He fights back a giggle, but isn’t too successful, judging by the weird expression on Rhett’s face.

"No reason," he says. "You, uh. You holding up okay?" It feels like it always does whenever they have a fight. That bit after, when Link is still pissed off but has cooled down enough that his anger to concern ratio is about 50:50 and he needs to check that Rhett is still good, that he doesn’t hate Link now, after whatever shitty things they’ve said to each other. 

"I’m hanging in there," he says. His lips purse, like he’s thinking his next words over. "Link …"

"The water in the bathroom will be activated for twenty minutes," the voice interrupts.

"About time," Link grumbles. "Only twenty?"

"Probably not thrilled it took us … it took  _ me _ three days to do a single task," Rhett said. "You should go in, ten minutes is pretty short."

Link hesitates. He wants to shower really really bad – but he also thinks about how much Rhett’s muscles must be aching after yesterday’s stress-position hold, how bad his back must be from the unfamiliar bed, even with its fancy mattress. He thinks about how Rhett hasn’t complained about those things even once, despite it being clear in the lines on his forehead.

(He thinks about the awful thing he said to Rhett yesterday, and about how Rhett was forced to kiss him, and how Link had just got off on it).

"You go first, brother," he says. "You know how carried away I get in the shower. Ten minutes ain’t enough for me to do the proper process, anyway."

Relief and gratitude settle in Rhett’s eyes. "I’ll save you some hot," he promises.

He fights off the urge to lie down and rest his eyes while Rhett showers, and his own ten minutes of water time passes in a flash. He must have been awake for thirty-six hours now. He feels like a zombie.

"Sorry ’bout your lip" is the closest Rhett gets to acknowledging the kiss, and Link is happy to leave it at that.

"D’you think it’s nearly time for food?" he wonders aloud. He’s so hungry his stomach aches, so he imagines that Rhett isn’t far off turning  _ Psalms _ into book sushi. "This is later than normal, right? They’ve usually opened the door by now."

Rhett is stretched out on his back on the bed with his eyes shut, but not asleep. Link perches carefully on the edge, making sure they don’t touch as he lies back. "I miss having a watch," he adds when he’s horizontal. "Or my phone, anyway."

"Getting the feeling we’re not getting food tonight," Rhett says. "I filled the bottles from the shower, so we’ve got that and the full cistern."

"I’m never going to complain about tap water again after this," Link says, freezing up when he realises he’s broken the unspoken rule of not talking about  _ after _ . Rhett doesn’t mention it, though."What were you gonna say earlier? The water announcement interrupted you."

"I don’t remember." 

It’s a lie, but Link doesn’t push it, sensing that there’s something fragile sitting between them, and he doesn’t know what would happen if he broke it.

They lapse into silence, and Link lets his eyes close. He doesn’t sleep so much as doze – he’ll get close to crossing over into unconsciousness, then jerk back, convinced he’s invading Rhett’s personal space. He keeps his eyes shut. He’s not faking, not avoiding his bed partner, it’s just … easier.

Eventually, the glow of the lights behind his eyelids shuts off as their 15x15 world switches from day to night. For all they know, it could be lunchtime in real life. Or maybe their families, too, are lying in the dark wondering where their dads and husbands are.

_ Christy _ . The guilt is intense, if not unexpected. He hadn’t had a choice about kissing Rhett, but he’d had complete control over what he thought about when he … did  _ that _ to himself.

_ Self-polluting _ . That’s what the pastors had called it when they were kids. He doesn’t think that, not anymore, not normally, but the shame of it now makes his skin itch.

Or maybe that’s the dehydration. He’s drying out, shrivelling up. His throat sticks when he swallows.

He’s about to get up when he feels movement from Rhett’s side of the bed. He holds his breath, then remembers that people don’t normally do that when they're asleep, so instead he tries to breathe slow and deep, mouth a little open. He hears Rhett let out a sigh and tries to work out where he is by the dip of the mattress, feeling himself list to one side as a knee moves not too far from his side.  _ What’s he doing?  _ Something soft brushes his cold skin, draping over him. 

The blanket. Rhett is tucking him in.

Fingers stroke through his hair, so unexpected that he can’t stop a quick intake of breath. Rhett freezes above him, and Link has to focus hard on faking it, to ignore the quickening of his pulse and soften his body as far as he can.

After a short while, Rhett obviously deems it safe to move away again. Link can hear him rustling around with the covers as he gets comfortable. Their hips nudge together. Eventually, they are both still.

Link jolts out of sleep to an alarm that comes in short, loud bursts. He flails around in confusion, falling into Rhett as they both try to get upright.

"What –?"

It cuts out as quickly as it began. Link is still dazed from being jerked so rudely awake, but Rhett is up and out of bed in an instant, pacing toward the camera. He’s shaking.

"We did what you wanted!" Rhett says, nearly as loud as the alarm. "Why won’t you assholes let us fucking  _ sleep _ ?"

Link scrambles to untangle himself from the blanket. "Rhett  _ no _ ." It feels like any second Rhett could snap and lash out, and that other chime will sound – only this time, the punishment will be for him, not Link.

(“ _ C’mon, Link, quit bein’ such a sissy.” Rhett is already half under the fence. “It’s not like you’ll be the one who gets his ass whupped if we get caught, your Momma’s always soft on you. _ ”)

Link grabs him, wrapping his arms around Rhett’s torso and pinning his biceps to his sides.

The alarm cuts off.

“Get offa me, Link!” Rhett tries to shake him off, but Link clings with all his wiry strength, his ear pressed against the back of Rhett’s chest. He can hear how hard his heart is racing. He knows the taller man could break away if he really wanted, but he doesn’t, allowing Link to calm him.

Like the night before, the alarm comes on and off randomly. Back on the bed, Link manages eventually not to jump a mile each time, but Rhett’s flinches shake the mattress with every renewed burst until morning.

[Day Six]

Now that the kiss hurdle has been overcome, there’s an email with three new tasks – but that’s not what grabs Link’s attention so much as the message below it, one that was apparently sent the previous day.

> To: a98j2034
> 
> From: theroom
> 
> Subject: S2 Reward (Bonus)

There is no text in the body of the email, just a black rectangle of an embedded video.

He hovers his finger over the play button.“Should I?”

"I dunno, buddy. It’s your video." The look Rhett gives him is penetrating. (But why couldn’t Link’s brain come up with another word? Ugh.)

“I dunno why,” he mumbles, and hits play just to distract Rhett’s attention away from him.

And distract it does. 

Link stiffens as a newcast pops up on screen, only behind the bright rolling banners and local news logos, that’s his house, and standing outside it –

"Christy," he says. She looks terribly small, deep bags under her eyes and a quiver in her hands, looking at the mic in front of her as if it’s threatening her.

_ MISSING YOUTUBE STAR’S WIFE SPEAKS OUT IN HEARTBREAKING APPEAL _ the scrolling headline reads. Rhett rests a hand on his shoulders.

The video starts with Christy halfway through a sentence.

“ – over ten days. Link, if you see this, we really miss you. Both of you. The kids wanted me to – to tell you how much they love you, and how much we all want you home with us. No matter what – what’s happened, where you are right now; we’ll work it out. You can always come home –”

The video returns to the black screen. Link stares at it. 

“She thinks I’ve run off,” he says hollowly.

“No, no –” Rhett gives his shoulder a little shake. “They always word it like that, they appeal directly to the person. You’ve watched CSI, you know that. They have to cover all bases.” 

When Link doesn’t respond, Rhett takes up again. “Besides, this clip is completely out of context, you don’t know what she said before or after. People who run away leave traces, and they won’t have found anythin’”

Link doesn’t reply, just hits play again to watch Christy’s face look shakily into the camera.

“I wanna go home,” he says, voice barely a whisper. Rhett winds and arm around his back in an uncomfortable half-hug that Link curls into.

“We’ll get home,” Rhett promises. “We’ll get there.”

> Knock on door for access.
> 
> Task one: Subject One feeds Subject Two by hand (box 1)
> 
> Task two: Subject Two gives Subject One a foot rub
> 
> Task three: Subject One slaps Subject Two

“Could be worse.”

“You could’ve waited until we opened the box to jinx it,” Link mutters. He still feels shaky from the video, his mind flitting back to it in every still moment.  _ Some reward _ . “I hate touching feet.”

“At least you don’t have to –” Rhett glances up at the camera. “– Nevermind, don’t want to give them any ideas.

“Slap me first,” Link says as they retrieve the box. “I want to know how much tickle to put in that rub.”

“Ew.” Rhett shoves his shoulder. 

“Careful, violence!” He’s mostly teasing, though he does anxiously look to the camera.

Rhett tears the box open. “Oh, that is so unfair!”

To Link’s pleasant surprise, it’s Reese's Pieces. He lets out a (hugely embarrassing) squeak of delight. “Quick.” He turns to Rhett. “Hit me, then feed me the candy!”

The other man snorts, amused in spite of himself. “Fine.”

“I could always spit some back out for you,” Link offers, not completely insincere. 

“Gross. Come here.”

Link stands in front of him, bending his knees and bouncing a little.

“How d’you think they pick these, anyway?” Rhett asks. “Dyou think they’re random, like our wheel?”

“I dunno, they’re kind of … escalating, right? Anyway, quit delaying.” 

“How so?” Rhett looks puzzled.

“How so what?”

“How are they  _ escalating _ ? We’re back to slapping today, the other time was what – five days ago?”

Link flushes. “Well, overall they’re getting more … you know.”

Rhett obviously  _ doesn’t  _ know. 

“ _ Suggestiv _ e,” Link says, omitting the  _ duh _ he wants to stick at the end, because Rhett  _ is _ going to be hitting him in short order. 

Rhett pulls a face. “You think so? How is slapping more suggestive than kissin’?”

“It’s a kink, man, I dunno.” Oh, this is not a conversation he wanted to have today, curse his big damn mouth.

Rhett’s palm bumps his cheek. It takes Link a second to realise he’s lining his shot up. He braces himself.

"Don’t tense your face up, it’ll hurt more.”

He un-scrunches his face, and Rhett strikes. Link stumbles back a step, the sound of sharp skin-on-skin contact ringing in his ears.

"Ow," he says. The left side of his face feels like it’s on fire. 

Rhett winces. “Sorry.” He grabs the baggie of Reese’s. “Want me to make it up to you?”

(The pieces taste better than they normally do. It’s because he’s starving, not the hint of salt from Rhett’s fingers.)

Despite the completion of all their tasks (Link still hates touching feet, nothing surprising there), that night they’re only given water. Link wants to throw it at the camera, but he doesn’t. Rhett just glances up at it, before beckoning Link to the bed. He leans in and pulls the sheet up over their heads.

“No cameras under here," he whispers.

Link is so close he could count the freckles across Rhett’s nose. He giggles, feeling like a child in a blanket fort after lights out. All that’s missing is a flashlight – and maybe not being six foot tall.

“Look.” Rhett holds out a clenched fist and opens it, revealing the scrunched candy wrapper from earlier. “They didn’t count them,” he says smugly, and tips out five pieces onto the mattress between them. 

Link grins back at him, “Nice. Eat them quick, just in case.”

“You want one?”

“Nah, I had plenty earlier, or did you miss that?” His stomach grumbles.  _ Shush, no one’s asking you _ .

Rhett eats them in one mouthful. Link isn’t even sure he chews them.

“Better not stay here, they might start to think they’re missing out.” Plus it's kind of clammy with both of them breathing together, and the proximity is getting to him. Rhett nods and whisks the sheet away. The air feels markedly cooler.

That night there are no alarms, no whines. Link sleeps like the dead, and he doesn’t dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A big stay safe to my US readers, and solidarity from this side of the pond <3  
> Next update will be Friday, beta permitting! As always, big thank you to Bowyer and her red pen of doom.


	7. Mail

[Day Seven]

He wakes before Rhett, which is unusual. The room is still in darkness, and cold – frigid even, and he wonders if that will be the next test, like the sleep deprivation.

He gropes for the tablet in the dark and it lights up with a soft glow. He mutes the video, and just watches Christy. He starts to well up after a while, but he can’t spare the moisture so he fumbles to hit pause. His hands are shaky, more so than usual from hunger and emotion, and he misses a couple of times, fingers landing on the blank white screen of the empty email body. 

The third time it happens, another window pops up, filling the screen.

_ What? _ Has he clicked some hidden hyperlink?

The new window looks a bit like a very basic, outdated chatroom, but with no option for Link to join the conversation. It seems to be updating in real time, new comments popping up as he watches.

> [participant]19.09: lololololol s1/s2 item73 ₿1
> 
> [participant]19.11: s1/s2 item122 ₿1
> 
> [participant]19.13: s1 item73 ₿1 >> :))
> 
> [participant]19.14: suck it s1/s2 item10 ₿2

It is gibberish. There’s no distinction in usernames, unless one guy called Participant is talking to himself. But why has it shown up in their message? Is someone trying to contact them?

> [MOD]19.15:closing in 5
> 
> [participant]19.15: get those snipes in lol
> 
> [participant]19.15: s2/s1 item69 ₿5
> 
> [participant]19.16: nice
> 
> [participant]19.16: @non go back 2 reddit
> 
> [MOD]19.16:closing in 4

Items, closing – an auction? The weird B looking thing could be a foreign currency. Now that a countdown has begun, the comments come in thick and fast, both what Link assumes are bids, and heckles too.

> [participant]19.17: s2/s1 item05 ₿10
> 
> [participant]19.17: oshit it gon happennn
> 
> [MOD]19.17:closing in 3
> 
> [MOD]19.18:closing in 2
> 
> [MOD]19.19:closing in 1
> 
> [participant]19.18: s1/s2 item10 ₿20
> 
> [MOD]19.20: CLOSED 
> 
> [participant]19.20: every fuckin room ffs
> 
> [participant]19.21: just go watch pornhub i10s
> 
> [participant]19.21: ;p
> 
> [MOD]19.21: reopens 1200 with tier 3 options available
> 
> [participant]19.22: time 2 hit the streeaaams
> 
> [participant]19.22: room5 got i22 fam i’m out

What the hell is he looking at here? The chat seems to devolve into crude emojis and insults between users (or just Mr Participant), so Link presses stuff until he gets back into the email. The video is still paused on Christy’s tearful face. 

He drags a finger across the screen, trying to highlight the hidden link to the chatroom. 

And then there it is, right there. White text on the white background that shows up in blue.

> hi .

What.  _ The. Fuck _ . Someone  _ is _ trying to communicate with them!

He wants to shake Rhett awake, but he’s pretty sure that the camera has night vision and that will make it obvious that he’s found something. With shaking hands he checks the other emails, but if there’s anything hidden there, he can’t find it.

What does this mean? If it is bidding that’s going on in the chat, he has a horrible, creeping idea of what they might be bidding on, but … no. No  _ way _ .

Whilst he’s quietly freaking out to himself, the day’s task list drops into the inbox, and the lights flick on. It is morning.

At the sight of the single task in the email, Link nearly has a heart attack. 

Oh fuck. Oh hell. Oh, every freakin’ cussword  _ no. _

Either he makes a noise, or the lights coming on have started to nudge Rhett awake, because there’s a sleepy stir of the blanket next to him.

_ Rhett can’t see this _ , Link realises.  _ I can’t let him see this _ .

Before he can think on it any harder, he hits the trashcan symbol in the corner of the screen. The email disappears, leaving the news clip as the most recent item in the inbox.

If Rhett wasn’t already waking up, the dissonant sound of the bad chime certainly did the job.

“But what the heck was that noise?”

“I dunno, maybe that’s how they’re wakin’ us up now.”

Rhett does not look convinced, not at all. They’re under the blanket again, breathing gross morning breath all up in each other's faces as Link shows him the secret hidden in the email.

“Why would someone show us this?”

“Could it be an accident?”

Link makes nervous eye contact. “You don’t think it’s – they’re not bidding on  _ us _ are they? I mean, on the things we have to do?”

“I think that’s exactly what’s going on,” Rhett says, expression grim. “This is some dark web bullshit. Also probably a horror movie plot.”

Link throws back the sheet, twisting to sit on the edge of the bed with his head between his knees.

“Think I’m gonna faint,” he says, trying not to sound hysterical. Rhett slides next to him, their legs touching from ankle to thigh, arm around his shoulders.

“No you’re not,” he says gently. “Just breathe.”

It’s always Link, isn’t it, the one who breaks down? The one Rhett has to gentle and soothe away from the edge.

“They’re putting this online, aren’t they? That’s what they mean by the streams?”

Rhett drapes the blanket around Link’s shoulders and says nothing, which Link knows is him agreeing. 

Link spends the whole day waiting. Rhett notices the lack of morning email, and Link waits for the same one to reappear in the inbox. 

It doesn’t.

“Maybe they’re giving us the day off? If we’ve been tracking them right, it must be Sunday,” Rhett suggests aloud, whilst tucked under what Link is now thinking of  _ The Secrecy Sheet _ (patent pending). “Maybe they caught whoever sent us the chat link, and that's keeping them busy?”

Link also waits for the punishment for deleting the email. Rhett must know something is up from the way Link sticks close all morning, but he doesn’t push. He  _ does _ draw the line when Link follows him into the bathroom, though.

_ “ _ I’ll leave the door open but you gotta stay out while I’m pooping.”

Link spends the entire time trying not to hyperventilate, sitting on the bed with his eyes pinned on the door hinge, waiting for any sign of movement. When Rhett emerges unscathed, he gives Link a concerned look.

When night comes with no food or water, Rhett hits a frustrated fist into the mattress.

“Rhett!” Link yelps.

“Oh, shut up, I’m not gonna  _ damage it _ ,” Rhett snaps. “If you keep hovering I’ll go and hit the damned camera, so quit it.”

Sullenly, Link tucks his knees up to his chest. There’s a moment of tense quiet, then Rhett lets out a long sigh.

“They better not expect any physical activity from me tomorrow, or I’m gonna faint.”

Link lets out a high, thready laugh. Even to him it sounds unhinged, but gosh, Rhett doesn’t even know what he’s saying. The contents of the deleted email flashes bright in his memory.

“What’s eating you, bo?” Rhett asks. “There’s something you ain’t saying.”

Link shakes his head. “It’s just getting to me, that’s all. ‘Specially after...” He nods at the tablet. “I’m worried what they’re going to make us do next.”

“We’ve just gotta take it one day at a time,” Rhett says. “Not normally my style, I know.”

Link gives the patch of darkness he thinks contains Rhett a long, serious look. “If I die first, I give you my permission to eat me.” He can’t keep a straight face though, and cracks up before the punchline. “I recommend the rump steak.” He slaps his hip as Rhett chokes on his own spit.

When they stop laughing and they’ve both crawled under their respective covers, Link sobers suddenly.

“We’re going to get through this, though.” He won’t let it be a question, even though he’s not sure anymore – if the task that morning was anything to go by, there might be no repairing their relationship once this is all over.

He hears Rhett nod. “Yeah.” His voice is thick, like he’s trying to hold back tears. Link stretches the gap between them, his hand seeking out Rhett’s. “Remember what you told me, that one time? ‘It’s okay not to be okay?’ Same goes for you. I got you, Rhett, even if we’re fighting. That’s what makes us work so well together.”

Rhett doesn’t say anything, but he squeezes Link’s hand back real hard.

Link stays awake. He’s got the tablet face up on the carpet down his side of the bed, and he lies close to the edge so he can see if it lights up.

What he’s waiting for, he isn’t sure.

Despite his best efforts, he drifts. He dreams that he wakes up and Rhett is gone from the room, and he is left alone. He dreams that one of the walls is a huge one-way window, and that on the other side people are crammed into cinema seating to watch them.

On realising it’s a dream, he jolts himself awake. The screen is dark, but he checks – and there’s an email in the inbox.

> To: a98j2034
> 
> From: theroom
> 
> Subject: S2 RE. sabotage of today’s task
> 
> You can delete this one, if you want.

There are images attached, numbered one through four. The first is too fuzzy to even call soft focus, but horribly clear in what it depicts: himself, eyes sleepy and pupils large, lying on his back. The picture cuts off mid chest, but the nudity is very heavily implied – the photo looks intimate. The next is – his stomach sinks and a flush rises – an outright _nude_. He’s obviously asleep ( _drugged unconscious_ , he assumes darkly. _These were most likely taken before they woke up here_ ), sprawled out butt naked with his tousled head pressed against a familiar broad, freckled back. Rhett. Link’s arm is curled over the other man’s ribs.

The next picture is a photograph of hard copies of the previous two images, along with a note on plain stationary:  _ ‘Though you should know x’ _ it says in graceful cursive.

Dread, already pooling in his gut, overflows as he comes to the final picture. It’s a padded tan envelope, neatly addressed to Link’s home.

_ "She won't believe you _ !" he wants to scream, as he deletes the email with numb fingers. But he doesn’t want to wake Rhett, and he’s not even sure if it’s true.

  
  


[Day Eight]

“Link, wake up.” It is morning, according to the room. “Liiink, rise and shine. Where'd you put the tablet?” Rhett’s weight presses on his middle back as he leans across and fishes the device from the floor. He pulls himself back, deliberately jostling Link on the way up.

He knows that the task has arrived, knows that Rhett has read it, when the quality of the silence changes and Rhett can’t conceal the choked intake of breath.

Why did he delete it the first time around? It had done nothing good, beyond give them one crappy day of respite.

“Have you seen it?”

Link nods. It’s not a lie, not really.

> To: a98j2034
> 
> From: theroom
> 
> Subject: Today’s tasks
> 
> Task: Subject One performs penetrative sex on Subject Two. Knock on door for supplies.

“Link …”

“I want to go back to sleep.” He’s kind of proud of how steady he keeps his voice.

“Okay,’ Rhett says quietly. Link keeps his eyes closed, listens to his feet pad across the carpet to the bathroom, the ceramic grind of the cistern lid, the splash of shallow water.

Rhett returns, pretending not to see Link spying on him through cracked eyelids. He puts a half full bottle next to Link’s pillow. Link squints, and can tell from memory and the gross flaky bits floating in it that it’s the last of the water. He pushes up wordlessly, shuts his eyes and drinks it without gagging. When Rhett steps back, Link can’t miss the slight sway, how he has to steady himself with a hand on the bed frame.

Despite the water he’s just drunk, Link’s voice when he speaks is raspy in his dry throat.

“I guess we should get this over with.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well look at that, I'm early posting! Slightly shorter, but I figured it was quite dense with plot stuff -- plus, I didn't want to break up the next chapter (I'm nervous, not an experienced smut writer here). Beta'd by [Bowyer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowyer/pseuds/bowyer), who posted her own awesome fic today.  
> Thanks for the continued love in the comments <3 Update coming this weekend!


	8. Epicentre

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it goes, folks! Hope you like a little smut in your feelings scene.

Rhett won’t look at him, and Link realises that, no matter how bad he’d thought this was going to be , it is actually going to be a hundred times worse.

Rhett retrieves the box alone. They know there won’t be another door crisis, not today. He opens the box on the floor, and Link doesn’t want to know what’s in it, what makes Rhett’s mouth stretch in a thin line and puts dread in his eyes.

_ What’s the best, least damaging way to do this? _

He can’t think of one. There’s not really a platonic way to butt-stuff your best friend. ‘ _ No homo _ ’ ain’t really gonna cut it.

“There’s um, lube. But no condoms,” Rhett says. He puts the offending item on the bed.

Is it possible to curl in on oneself to the point where you burst and become a black hole? Link’s gonna try it. For science. How is he meant to even reply to that?

“Oh,” he manages, though it comes out as little more than a pitiful noise.

Rhett makes an abortive move toward the bed. “We could do this later,” he offers, like this is just some annoying paperwork or a script outline they’ve yet to finalise. Link huffs out a loud breath.

“Link.” Rhett is faltering over coming closer, shoulders hunched in that way he does when he’s worried about being intimidating. Does he think Link is frightened of  _ him _ ? “I know this is awful but you’ve got to work with me here.”

Rhett thinks Link is frightened of him, and here’s Link: unable to look at his best friend’s body without thinking about how it’s going to feel on top of him.

He steels himself, reaching out a hand. Rhett takes it for the invitation it is, and then they’re locked in an awkward hug, Link still sat on the bed and Rhett almost doubled over.

“Don’t hurt your back,” Link says automatically. 

“Not really worrying much about that right now.”

“Well, I am.” He frees himself from Rhett's arms and scoots his butt back. Rhett, still standing, hovers. He’s the picture of indecisiveness, and Link realises that he’s going to have to take point, as it were. Steeling himself, he jams his thumbs under the waistband of his boxers, resting back on his elbows to shimmy them off over his hips. Poor Rhett’s eyes almost bug out of his head.

Link tries for a joke. He’s not sure if this is the right time for it, but when has that ever stopped him before? “I know you don’t get laid a lot buddy, but getting naked is usually the first step.”

It seems to be the right ratio of humour to insult to jolt Rhett out of his panic.

“Oh, so  _ you’re _ the sexpert now?”

“Well, I do have more kids than you, sooo …”

“Everyone knows the more kids you have, the less alone time.” When Link doesn’t hit him with a snarky comeback, Rhett raises an eyebrow. “Got you there, huh?”

As much as Rhett would no doubt like to believe that Link is floored by his witticism, it’s more to do with him taking off his own underwear and looming over Link like something out of his most secret of fantasies.

“You got me,” Link squeaks, hoping Rhett doesn’t hear his heart trying to break out of his chest and that he doesn’t accidentally repeat his mantra of  _ don’t stare at his penis _ out loud.

“So,” Rhett says.

“We’re naked.”

“Yup.” He visibly swallows. “This is it, then.”

“You, ah, better get down here before I run off and barricade myself in the bathroom.” This time, Link’s attempt at humour misses its mark, judging by Rhett’s flinch. He does move, though, coming down on all fours on the bed, knees bracketing Link’s legs as he inches over him. Link has to remind himself to breathe.

“Jus’ do it, bo.” The heat of Rhett’s thighs pressing either side of him is intense, and Link craves the weight of him the way he craves water. “It’s not our fault. We didn’t choose this. They’ll understand.” 

He’s not lying, but at the same time he knows he’s a fraud – Rhett doesn’t want to be doing this, Rhett is consenting under duress, because his only other choice is  _ death _ by inevitable starvation, and here's Link with his sick fantasy coming true, cock already stirring between his thighs.

Rhett can’t even look at him, eyes going to the ever-watching camera.

“Don’t look at it,’ Link begs, then breaks his own heart with his next words – “Think about Jessie, if that makes this easier, just … don’t look at  _ it _ .”

Rhett’s gaze is truly on him then, pinning him down. Link feels like he’s being dissected, skin and muscle pulled back, chest cracked open to reveal his heart hammering in his chest alongside all his secret feelings.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Rhett says, and Link realises that, despite how obvious it is, Rhett still hasn’t seen it. 

“You couldn’t,” he lies. “After all these years, I’ve developed an immunity to damage-by-Rhett, I think.”

“Everything we go through, we always come out stronger,” Rhett reminds him. His eyes are red, he’s fighting back tears.

Link shifts. “It might be easier if I’m on my knees.” He desperately wants Rhett to tell him no. He wants to see Rhett, see what it would be like, just this once, so he can hold onto it for the rest of his life.

“Whatever you want, bo,” Rhett tells him, sad and gentle, and Link really considers telling him ‘ _ I want this _ ’, just so that Rhett can be angry and not trapped under this false apprehension that Link isn’t doing this to him at least slightly as much as their captors. 

His chest shudders with panicky tears. Consent under duress is not  _ consent _ . Rhett can’t consent to this. It’s rape. Link is going to – 

“Breathe, breathe, please Link.  _ Please. _ ”

He forces his chest to unlock. Drags in a breath. Another.

“And out,” Rhett reminds him, voice thick. He’s holding him, Link realises. They’ve moved, Rhett’s bare thighs are touching his hips, Link draped up against him, back-to-belly. Rhett’s arms are wrapped around him, tight enough to be comforting but not constrictive.

“I’ll take the punishment,” Rhett promises quietly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I won’t make you do that, I can’t.”

Link twists so he can meet his eyes.

“ _ Rhett _ ,” he says, and tries to put everything into that one word, because he’s always been terrible at expressing his feelings. One hand goes to the side of Rhett’s face, beard against his palm, and draws him in. Link presses their mouths together, finding Rhett’s slightly open in surprise, and he tastes a soft huff of breath. 

It’s not like the other kiss. Link shudders in relief as Rhett’s lips move against his, his tongue demanding soft entry. Link grants it, and in doing so a small sound escapes him, a whimper that makes him turn red in embarrassment. 

Rhett’s only doing this because he has to, he reminds himself. Remember that.

It’s hard, especially when Rhett makes a sound of his own in response; a rumble that runs from his chest into Link’s body and straight south from there. 

“It’s okay,” he whispers when they pull apart, quiet as he can, so the microphones don’t pick it up. “It really is okay, Rhett.” He hopes that’s enough to absolve him. The bed creaks as he sinks onto his back, and Rhett follows like they’re connected by an invisible wire.

He’s not felt shy around Rhett for so long, not since they were kids right back at the start of it all. Not until now, when he holds out a trembling hand.

“Pass the – the stuff.” Lube. It’s  _ lube _ , you can say that word, Neal.

“Lube,” he says, just as Rhett drops it into his hand. It earns him a quizzical head tilt.

“Uh. It’s to – I’ve got to prepare. You know?” Because this situation needs to be more awkward.  _ Rhett knows what lube is for, you dumbass _ . No wonder Rhett has never been interested in him this way, he’s a fumbling mess.

Red from his ears to the base of his throat, Link busies himself with the lube, squirting plenty into his hand. Rhett raises an eyebrow.

“It’s better to use too much than too little,” Link says. Then he realises what that implies, and adds hurriedly – “… or so I hear. Read. Somewhere.”

“You’ve done this before,” Rhett says, a little bit of  _ gotcha _ in his voice. “With Christy?”

Link shakes his head. The blush is travelling down past his nipples at this point.

“By … yourself?” Rhett asks, careful, like he’s opening a box that might contain fire ants.

Link nods.

“Huh.” Rhett doesn't seem disgusted, at least. Ambivalent acceptance with a touch of mild surprise, like Link had just corrected him on his favourite colour or something.

Link fidgets. “I need to, um. You can watch if you want to, but … you probably don’t want … it's fine. Either way. Um.” 

_ Want some word salad with that, Rhett? _

_ " _ I’m not gonna lie, I’m kind of curious,” Rhett says, surprising him. “Just say if you don't want me to. And I’ll look away if it gets too much for me. Okay?”

A plan. Rhett knows how much Link likes plans. A pleasant shudder travels up his spine and he twists into place: chest pressed against the bed, ass pushed up, fingers reaching down to slide between his cheeks.

“Oh gosh, Link.” Rhett squeaks a bit, and Link shoots him the stink eye as best he can with his face smushed into the mattress.

“Please keep commentary to a minimum, I –  _ ooh _ .” That last bit gets in by accident, as his fingers find what they’re looking for and he makes a breathy noise in response.

Rhett is very, very quiet as Link works himself open. He forces himself not to look at him, because he thinks Rhett might not appreciate Link staring at him while his fingers are in his butt.

But maybe he’s wrong, because eventually Rhett interrupts again.

“Should I be … should I help?”

Link’s breath stutters in his chest.

“I didn’t think you’d want that,” he says. He feels the bed dip as Rhett moves near.

“Well, I figure … we’ve got to make sure we get it right. Don’t want to have to do it over, right?”

Something in Link hurts a little, but the brush of Rhett’s warm fingers on his hip almost makes up for it, sending chills darting across his skin.

“Can I …”

“Y-yeah, go on, I guess.” The feigned nonchalance sounds ridiculous in Link’s quavering voice.

The cap of the lube clicks.There’s a short while of nothing but Link’s unsteady breathing,then Rhett’s fingers push all the air out of him. He’s glad his face is mostly hidden, as his mouth opens in a noiseless gasp. He must give some physical reaction, though, as Rhett instantly withdraws.

“Sorry, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?” A flat palm smoothes over his lower back.

“No. S’good. Really, really …” he trails off, shoulders hunching up around his ears. But as usual, there’s no hiding from Rhett.

“You – you actually like this, huh?”

Shame leaches from his skin like sweat, but Rhett’s fingers return, hesitantly circling Link’s entrance before pushing gently in.

He doesn’t seem to know what to do next, so Link prompts him into movement, trying not to press back too eagerly against faltering thrusts.

There’s a period of silence that is just starting to turn uncomfortable when Link says, “Okay. I think I – I’m ready.” He sits up.Rhett is wiping his fingers off on a wad of toilet paper, actively avoiding Link’s eyes. Might be a problem with that,” he says, with a gesture downward to where his cock rests, flaccid against his kneeling thighs.

Of course he’s not turned on by this. This is sick. Link angles himself so that Rhett can’t see his own body’s interpretation of the situation.

“We can stop,” he says.

“Can we really?” They both know the answer.

“Close your eyes.” Link waits until Rhett obeys, then moves close, letting his knee brush against him so he knows Link is near. He telegraphs every movement like that, not wanting to take Rhett by surprise, but not wanting to talk so that his friend can maintain some more attractive illusion behind his eyelids. For the first time in his life he wishes his hands were smaller and more feminine, as he brushes the wet tips of his fingers against Rhett’s happy trail, following it down. Finally, he takes Rhett in hand, eliciting a full body shudder. He’s distracted by the way Rhett’s throat bobs, head tilting back as Link strokes him. He imagines pressing kisses across his chest, his neck, anywhere he can reach while Rhett twitches and hardens in his grasp. He’s making small throaty sounds now, and they make Link ache desperately.

“ _ Link _ .” His name in Rhett’s rough voice is like a jolt of electricity straight to his dick. “Stop, Link.”

He stops, pulling his hand back as though he’s touching a hot stovetop.

“Sorry,” he says, “sorry.”

“No, no – you’re fine. I’m fine. I just – I’m ready now. As ready as I will be, I mean.”

“Oh.” Something inside him curls into a knot of fear and heady anticipation. “Okay.”

He turns his back on Rhett, onto his hands and knees. There’s no movement behind him, and his mind conjures a dozen humiliating scenarios – Rhett has left him there, butt in the air like an idiot; or he’s found out about Link’s horrible secret and this has all been an elaborate prank to humiliate him and end their friendship for good.

As his heart starts to accelerate, big, warm hands come down on his hips, stroking up and down his sides, and the beat turns from one of panic to something else. Rhett’s knees settle either side of Link’s legs, his groin against Link’s ass and –  _ oh!  _ – the hot line of his –

“Breathe,” Rhett reminds him, spread over Link’s back all heavy and warm. Link breathes.

“I know this … this isn’t where we ever thought we’d be,” Rhett says, and Link selfishly wishes he’d stop.  _ Let me have this, just this once _ . “But I can’t do it if you don’t – I can’t force you. I don’t want to force you, Link. You’re the – the best thing in my life, you know that, right?”

Link can’t help but tear up. Rhett is being so careful with him, in a way that he’s pretty certain is undeserved at this point.

“You too,” he whispers back. “Please – please do it, Rhett.”

He feels Rhett part his cheeks, then the insistent nudge of the head as he guides himself to Link’s asshole. When it comes, the push is intense. He tries to make himself relax, he really does, lightheaded as he forgets for a while how to work his lungs, focussing totally on the slow slide of Rhett entering him. 

And then, there they are. As intimate as they’ve ever been, literally connected; he feels Rhett’s breath hot on the back of his neck, as he holds the taller man up and takes his weight. Rhett’s hands move across his skin, his back, his flanks, his shoulders, obviously unsure of where to settle. Link knows where he wants them, but he also knows that’s not something he can ask for.

Rhett, finally, starts to move with an experimental thrust of his hips that drives him deeper. Link dares to push back against him, canting his hips to find the best angle, building a rhythm between them as easily and naturally as harmonising their voices.

When Rhett unintentionally locates Link’s prostate, Link can’t help but moan aloud, thighs quivering beneath him. When Rhett hits it again, his bones seem to jellify, collapsing him forward onto his stomach as he arches in pleasure. It clearly does something for Rhett, too, the change of angle, perhaps, or the way Link clenches around him involuntarily. Either way, heat blooms inside Link as Rhett’s body stiffens, a low noise spilling from Rhett's mouth onto his skin as the rhythm falters into short jerks of his hips. 

Eventually he sinks down onto Link, easing himself free with a soft shudder, sliding sideways so that he’s not crushing him, but they’re still pressed close together, lying on their sides.

_ That’s it.  _ The realisation lands on Link far heavier than Rhett ever could. He feels the approach of emotion like an earthquake, desperately trying to tamp down on it but, like the metaphorical force of nature, it cannot be stopped.

“Shh, shh,” Rhett makes quiet sounds in his ear, One arm sliding under Link’s head, the other resting on his hip, thumb making little circles on the skin there. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I got you.”

There’s no hiding, lying this way. He knows Rhett can see how hard he is, cock flushed and jutting out – hell, he  _ hears _ when Rhett sees it, the small noise he makes when he realises how much Link wanted this.

Rhett's breath is shaky in his ear. “Can I?”

Link nods, fresh tears coming as Rhett’s hand closes around his dick, thumb rubbing over the tip. It doesn’t take much more to send Link over the edge, trembling in Rhett’s embrace as he goes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I am NERVOUS about posting this! Thanks as always to Bowyer for the beta.   
> I'm not a seasoned smut writer, guys - in my 10+ years in fandom this is only the second sex scene I've ever posted, so make of that what you will. Hope it works! Next chapter up Monday - and you'll notice that there is now a /14 on that chapter count, because lo: there is a complete first draft. This thing is the most I've written daily since I finished my degrees, and the feedback you lovely people have given me has been wonderful, so thank you <3


	9. Respite

The chime sounds and the voice announces a full two hours of water, but neither of them acknowledges it. Link feels exhausted, wrung out, but warm in a way that transcends body temperature. He thought Rhett would back off after the confirmation that they were done, but strangely enough he seems content to lie there with their legs tangled together and his arm draped over Link’s belly.

He could fall asleep like this, but even as he lets his eyes close he reminds himself that he has to make the most of it.

“We should clean up,” Rhett says inevitably. Link considers feigning sleep, but that feels too dishonest so he nods in agreement. Rhett peels himself away (ew, sweat) and Link flushes bright red when he realises the mess he’s made of the sheets. It's only now, when it comes rushing back to him, that he realises he’d stopped feeling embarrassed for a while.

“You shower first,” Rhett says. “And you, uh. Might wanna clench a bit before you stand up.”

What? Oh.  _ Oh.  _ Shame trickles down his spine – no, ugh, word choice,  _ ew _ . Ew! 

He turns the shower a little hotter than he normally would and scrubs a little harder. There’s an ache in his lower body that he’d expected, but he hadn’t anticipated how much he’d like it. He’s realised over the years that he likes a certain degree of pain alongside pleasure, to the point it’s become a bit of a recurring joke on set, but the lingering reminder is … something. It’s with reluctance that he turns off the water, and he delays his return into the room proper by drinking greedily from the tap at the sink until he feels bloated.

There’s a soft knock on the door, which he’d left ajar. 

“You okay?” Rhett calls through the gap.

“Sorry, yeah. I’ll let you shower.” He yanks his boxers up his legs and hopes he didn’t hog too much of their limited water time.

“No rush,” Rhett reassures him. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t freaking out by yourself in there.” He jumps back when Link suddenly opens the door the whole way. 

“Bathroom is all yours,” he says, feeling shy all of a sudden.  _ Get a grip, get a grip! _

Whilst Link was showering, Rhett balled up the dirty sheet and left it by the door, and tucked the lube discreetly under the bed – next to the copy of  _ Psalms _ , which Link finds simultaneously horrifying and hilarious. 

He takes the blanket and wraps himself up tight, lying on the bed and giving himself permission to drift. He can feel the reality of what they’ve done squeezing in through the sleepy post-orgasm haze, and he wants to put it off just a little longer.

It's to be expected, he decides, that his mind would keep returning to what happened. He’s a chronic obsessor in day-to-day life, after all, and it’s perfectly reasonable that he’d want to analyse such a significant turn of events.

There’s an awful lot to analyse.

They’d expected that things would play out as usual, with food arriving in the evening, but not longer after Rhett finishes in the shower and the water clunks off, the voice rings out from it’s hidden speakers.

“The box containing your rewards is behind the door. Please put any laundry and empty bottles in the box and return it to the hallway when you are ready.

They return to using the hand-in-hand trick with the door. Just in case.

Before Rhett even grabs the box, Link can smell something absolutely amazing.

“Is that  _ McDonald’s _ ?”

It is.

“Don’t eat too much,” Link says.

“Yes, _ Mom _ .” Rhett does make an effort to slow his pace. There’s plenty of food – fries and two burgers apiece, but after days of nothing even half a burger is enough for Link to feel too full, the greasiness of it making him nauseous. He does drain his cup of coke though, and the return of sweet caffeine to his system sends his pulse into doubletime. 

Putting down his empty drink, he eyes Rhett suspiciously.

“Are you  _ crying _ over a burger?”

“Don’t judge me, bo.” He has a smudge of ketchup on his nose. Link’s heart flutters – coffee addiction is a bitch.

With even Rhett's appetite shrunk down a little, there’s plenty left over to bag up for the next day. Hunger finally sated, they turn their attention to the rest of the box’s contents. It’s an assortment of things that two weeks ago would have appeared unremarkable, but now bring about giddy excitement – the usual water bottles, a bar of cheap chocolate, several pairs of boxers in both men’s sizes, a thin comforter, toothbrushes and even a small assortment of trashy paperbacks.

They must have done a good job.

The books and food are sequestered under the bed, and their laundry dumped in the empty box. 

“I filled all the empty bottles in the bathroom,” Link points out. 

“Well, they did just say  _ empty _ bottles.” They put their fast food cups in the box as a show of good faith, and return it to the corridor. 

They spend the rest of the day reading. Link’s first pick is a vapid action/thriller, where all the main characters are brooding ex-special forces men with burgeoning alcoholism and daddy issues. It’s thoroughly enjoyable, and even more valuable is the way it takes over his brain without space for any other thoughts to wiggle their ways in past all the explosions and cringy depictions of women.

When his eyes get tired, he picks up the tablet, opening the hidden link and frowning when a message pops up: _ Error! This page does not exist. _

Next to him, Rhett buries his nose in a western. They sit against the headboard, their thighs all but touching.

Heh.  _ Butt touching _ .

“What you gigglin’ about?”

“Nothing, just this book being dumb.” To Link’s surprise, he’s over two thirds through it. “I should probably stop for today, or I’ll run out.”

“I’m gonna keep going. Lights will probably go soon.”

Link goes and cleans his teeth, enjoying the stiff bristles and that new-toothbrush texture, returning to snuggle down under the comforter. It’s much thicker than even the blanket, and he presses his face into his pillow with a happy groan and a wiggle that makes Rhett snort in amusement.

“That one is way bigger than the blanket, y’know.”

Link pulls it defensively around himself and frowns at him from his cocoon. “Just because you’re a giant doesn’t mean you get the biggest everything.”

“Yeah, I gathered that earlier,” Rhett said, with a suggestive arch of an eyebrow. It takes Link a moment to process what he might be referring to. When he does, he lets out a strangled squawk and swats at Rhett with a handy drink bottle whilst his friend clutches at his chest and cackles at his own joke. Link’s blush is equal parts embarrassment and flattery. 

Okay, maybe 40/60. 

  
  


“D’you want the comforter, man?” Link asks sleepily, after Rhett spends an hour tossing and turning in lieu of sleeping.

“No,” Rhett says sulkily.

“Water?”

“No.”

“Wanna finish your burger?”

“No!”

Link hesitates. “D’you wanna … talk. About anything?”

“No,” Rhett says, quieter. 

Link kind of  _ does _ , now he thinks about it. He wants to talk to Rhett, get his confirmation that it’s not cheating if you’re  _ forced _ to do it. But now isn’t the time.

“Is there anything I  _ can _ do?”  _ Stop playing twenty questions, probably _ .

“Just … lie on your other side?”

Obediently, Link turns onto his left, finding a position that shouldn’t bother his shoulder too much. He nearly jumps a mile when Rhett’s long body bumps up behind him and settles there, a hot presence against Link’s back.

“This okay?” The question is so quiet, so nervous, that it’s almost inaudible.

Link is pretty sure he’s having an out-of-body experience, but that’s okay because his body must have some kind of autopilot that says, “Yeah, s'all good, bo.” in Link’s voice. And, well. It’s not a lie.

“I’m still not a cuddler,” Rhett is quick to add in a stronger voice. 

“Sure.” The heat of him is accelerating Link’s descent into sleep. “Not cuddlin’ me. I’ss … just conservin’ heat.”

He falls asleep as Rhett relaxes against him, breath evening out into soft snores.

[Day Nine]

  
  


Rhett is already up when Link claws his way out of sleep. He’s finishing his book, tablet propped against his knees.

“New tasks?” 

Rhett grunts in confirmation. He finishes the final page, and drops the book onto the bed.

“I gotta blow you.” He says it almost casually. 

Link almost asphyxiates on the spot.

“Youwhut?” he squeaks when he’s stopped coughing.

“That’s today’s task.” He passes over the tablet and Link confirms that it is, indeed, the entirety of their to-do list.

“Don’t say I don’t have to,” Rhett warns. “We both know that’s bull.”

“I’m sorry.”

Rhett lets out a shaky breath. “Mind if we … leave it a bit? ’Til later?”

“S-sure, whatever you need.” How he’s meant to just hang out and look at Rhett and not think about it all day is a whole other board game, but he’ll do it if it means making his friend as comfortable as possible in such a fucked up situation. “How about cold breakfast burgers?”

Rhett perks up. “You read my mind.”

“How were the cowboys?” Link asked as they settled down for a floor picnic of cold fast food and toilet water (which these days sounded like a banquet).

“Eh, bit dramatic. Lots of brothers shooting each other. Everyone dies at the end – spoiler alert.”

“I guess I’ll leave that one ’til last, then.”

The burger is congealed and the chips are stiff, yet it all still tastes like heaven. Rhett stops chewing, making a face, and extracts something from his mouth.

“Bit of bone,” he says when he catches Link looking. “They should complain, get a refund. I coulda choked.” 

Link tuts. “Fussing over a bit of bone? You put way worse in your mouth all the time.” His eyes go round when he remembers the damoclean sword of the day, and hurries to contextualise. “At work! Like bricks and poop water and balls. Animal balls!” 

“Wanna stop digging and give yourself a second to climb out of that hole?” Rhett asks, clearly amused.

Link nods miserably. “It’s like verbal quicksand.”

Rhett gets to his feet with a grunt, and extends an arm down to him. “Let’s get you out of that sand, I wanna talk ‘bout something a little private.”

Enlisting the services of the Secrecy Sheet (™), Rhett produces – 

“Ew, is that the bone?” Link whispers as quiet as possible; there’s no telling how sensitive any microphones are.

“Not bone.” Rhett fiddles with it, unrolling a small piece of what looks like receipt paper. No – not  _ like, _ it’s an actual receipt. The McDonald’s logo is clearly visible.

“Looks like someone pissed off the server.”

“No, man, it’s a message,” Rhett sounds excited. “There’s something written on it. ‘P296’.”

As secret messages go, it sounds pretty anticlimactic to Link. He grabs the thin paper. It’s stained with grease and smells like Kraft singles.

Sure enough, in red pen it says ‘P296’, but Link is more interested in the business address.

“Rhett, lookit that – we’re in  _ Wyoming _ , what the hell? They moved out of California?”

“Well, we did lose those three days at the start – it would make sense to keep us knocked out if they were moving us. It’s what, a seventeen hour drive? Not like they could fly with us in their carryon.” He stops whispering all of a sudden, and his normal volume sounds incredibly loud. “We should do some reading.”

Link gives him a  _ “What are you on?” _ sort of look.

“ _ Page number, _ ” Rhett mouths, pointing at the red scribble. 

They try to look casual as they emerge, though Link is sure he’s doing a terrible job. He’s practically vibrating, and forgets to look at the book blurbs or even the titles before grabbing one up and leafing through the pages. Well, it's certainly not this one – did he reach p296 on his thriller? He’s pretty sure he didn’t.

Rhett makes a funny noise.

“Hey, Link. This is a good bit, you should read it.”

He tries to take the book, but Rhett won’t let go.

“No, sit this way around.” Back to the camera, of course. 

Between each line, someone has written in cramped pencil letters:

THEY SAID THEY LET PEOPLE GO AVENTUALLY IF THEY COPERATE BUT I

DON’T KNOW I'M KINDA NEW. I MOSTLY MONITER THE FEED AND RUN ERRANDS. THEY DONE THIS A LONG TIME BUT NO 

ONE EVER TELLS THE POLICE. MY KID SISTER WATCHES UR SHOW.

IM SORRY I CAN’T HELP MORE.

“Great,” Link whispers bitterly. “All that to say he can’t help us. Why even bother making contact?”

“He obviously feels bad. If we can get a message back to him, we might be able to persuade –”

“Oh, right, I’ll just scribble a message with the pen I have and magically send it to him in a way the others won’t find!”

Rhett’s eyes flick anxiously to the camera, and Link hopes he wasn’t getting too loud.

“I … just don’t want to get my hopes up,” he confesses. “I’m sorry for shuttin’ you down.”

Rhett smiles, a small quirk of his mouth. His green eyes lack their normal shine, and Link aches to know that there’s nothing he can do to put it back. 

“We’ll make it out of this,” he says, hoping his promises aren’t starting to sound hollow. He tries to take all the jumble of things he feels when he looks at Rhett and mix them in with his words. His need for Rhett to understand makes his hands jitter. “You’re so strong, Rhett, and everyone always leans on you – me, more’n anyone. But you can lean on me too, right brother? It ain’t weak to lean when you’re tired.”

Rhett lets out a sudden rush of breath, and Link thinks he’s going to shout, or lash out, or hug him, or tackle him to the ground. But it’s none of those things, because Rhett kisses him.

Rhett is, in general, a pretty intense person, and that extends into the way he kisses. It’s overwhelming and fierce, and oddly reminiscent of the energy he has when he’s trying to explain concepts like the multiverse and wine pairing.

Who exactly gets their tongue involved first is lost to Link, but whoever it is deserves a prize because Rhett proceeds to kiss him into a shivery hot mess. The bed appears behind his legs from nowhere, which is convenient because they aren’t holding him up very well at all at this point, so he decides to go with it and take a seat. His fingers are digging into the muscle of Rhett’s shoulders, feeling them shift as the other man moves his hands in Links hair and on his neck, his back. 

He’s pretty sure that all every hair on his body is standing on end when Rhett pulls back, breathing heavily, and drops to his knees in front of the bed. In front of Link. Who realises that  _ later _ is  _ now _ .

“Later is now?!” he squeaks, definitely edging on the hysterical side of whatever this terror/elation combo is.

Rhett nods furiously. He appears to be holding his breath.

Link clutches at the waistband of his boxers. “I – I’m not sure if I’m ready,  _ oh gosh _ .” Rhett’s hands are resting on his thighs, fingertips ten hot points dimpling his skin. They lock eyes, and Link sees a mirror of his own mixed emotions reflected back at him in green. He leans forward and Rhett tilts upward (a novelty, he imagines) and they lock lips again.

He can deal with his own fear later, he decides. Right now, his focus is getting Rhett through this. When they’re kissing, he can feel that Rhett is still breathing.

Link makes a push to deepen the kiss, find a rhythm between them – they’re good at that, and they’re always better together when they have a strong foundation to work from. He feels Rhett’s tense posture soften a little, as much as it’s probably going to considering the circumstances, and so Link moves his own left hand slowly to touch himself through his boxers.

The reasoning behind this is twofold: one, Link really really wants to touch Rhett right now, but is frightened of pushing him too far; and two, he remembers Rhett’s previous urge to join in that manifested last time Link touched himself intimately. That, perhaps, is the key to this.

He hears the click of Rhett’s joints as he shifts uncertainty on his knees, but then Link’s hunch pays off – tentative fingers brush the back of his hand tucked between his legs.

Rhett’s exploration is hesitant at first, touch light and noncommittal. When Link moves his own hand away, that sparks a little more confidence. He can help the small whine that escapes and the twitch of his hips when Rhett's palm presses down with promising firmness.

A little of that tension returns to Rhett’s shoulders, and he nods to himself, the conclusion of an internal conversation. He slides his fingers under Link’s waistband and tugs, wordlessly prompting Link to press up on his hands and lift his butt.

The cool air on his cock makes him hiss a breath in through his teeth. Rhett sits back on his ankles, and stops there, just … looking.  _ Assessing _ . Link fights the urge to hide himself.

“You look smaller than you felt yesterday,” Rhett says.

“ _ Rhett!”  _ Link squawks indignantly, cupping his hands over his crotch. “Rude!”

“Not in a  _ bad _ way,” Rhett insists. “It’s a perfectly good size. Big, even.”

Agony. This has gone from tentatively hot to  _ agony _ . He groans.

Rhett’s hands tug at his wrists.

“Did you know, it's a scientific fact that things feel bigger if you feel them with your tongue compared to your finger? It’s called an oral illusion.”

“If this is what constitutes talking dirty for you, please stop,” Link begs. He’s not sure whether he’s more or less embarrassed that his erection doesn’t seem at all phased. He lets his hands fall to his sides and Rhett shuffles in closer. The insides of Link’s knees rub against either side of his chest. Eyes fixed on Link’s own, he licks his hand and curls his fingers around the base of Link’s cock. It feels a little like he’s daring him to back out, like a game of chicken gone so far it's in the realms of satire.

There could be a sketch there, actually. Someone has probably already done it.

Link’s wandering attention is dragged back to the situation at hand by Rhett ducking his head and coming to a halt barely an inch away from where Link would really,  _ really  _ like him to be right now. He can feel the heat of Rhett’s breath on his sensitive skin.

“Rhett,” he says, his voice uneven. “We can stop if you need to.”

Rhett either ignores that entirely, or takes it as a challenge. He takes Link in as far as he can go – it’s admittedly not far at all, but it feels like a goddamn mile to Link, and he knows Rhett has a teeny little mouth so it probably feels a lot to him too.

He can’t stop making sounds – he’s said  _ ‘oh’ _ a whole bunch, and Rhett’s name too. His hands are clenching so tight in the sheets that his knuckles pop as Rhett bobs his head experimentally. He gags a little once or twice, finding out how much is too much, and at one point there’s an alarming hint of  _ teeth _ that makes Link squeak out a warning, but overall, it’s going smoothly. Then Link’s climax sneaks up on him, and he barely has time to gasp a warning before he comes.

Rhett chokes and flails back in a way that might be funny later on, but just leaves him gagging and hunched over in the moment. Link, simultaneously panicking and reeling from the endorphin high,underwear around his ankles, tries to get to him and slams his face into the bedstead in the process. He’s not sure if the chime is just in his head from the impact.

“Ah fugh,” he says, clutching his nose. He makes it on hand and knees to Rhett's side. Rhett looks up with watering eyes, which bug out when he catches sight of Link’s face.

“Whud?” Link asks worriedly, starting to pull his hand away from his face. He sounds like he has a heavy cold.

“Shut your eyes!” Rhett’s voice is raspy. 

“Wh–”

“Do it, Link!”

“Ab I bleedig?” Even the thought makes him lightheaded.

“Pinch your nose, buddy. You’re okay, I just need to get you a tissue.”

There isn’t much TP left, but Rhett returns with a generous wad that he shoves in Link’s face.

“Don’t tip your head back.”

Fortunately, it’s not a bad bleed. Nothing is broken. The pair of them sit sprawled on the floor, one breathing hard, still coughing occasionally; the other buck naked and dabbing tenderly at his face. 

Rhett looks between them and snickers. Link can help his own face splitting into a dumb grin.

“Don’t we look a sight?” Rhett says.

“You sound like you just swallowed a cactus.” 

“Yeah, I wonder whose fault that is?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, wasn't today's GM More a gift?  
> Thank you to the lovely responses on the last chater, folks <3 Not sure exactly when the next update will be, as I'm being un-furloughed tomorrow so it's back to working from home for me. It will be this week though! A big thanks to Bowyer's iron gaunlet of grammaring, as always.


	10. Shake

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slightly shorter update today guys, but there's good news re. the update schedule in the end notes :)

They now have towels and lukewarm TV dinners. Rhett eats his in about one minute flat, and Link lets him have his baked potato ( _ “I’m stuffed, and this will be gross when it’s cold. Please finish it for me? _ ”). It makes him feel good to know Rhett got a full meal and, despite himself, he feels grateful to the room for sending it. 

This time, there are no notes hidden in the food.

“Any thoughts on how to write back?” Rhett whispers, scrunching and un-scrunching the flimsy plastic tray in his hands to create interference if anyone is listening. 

“None yet,” Link says, guiltily. He hasn’t given it any thought – he meant to, but it got away from him. 

“We could've used blood to write,” Rhett ponders, “but we still have to get it to him.”

“Or her.” The idea of blood writing makes him feel queasy. “They said they watch the feed – does our message even need to be physical?”

“Hmmm.” 

Rhett changes the course of the conversation and doesn’t mention it again that night, but Link knows what it looks like when the first shoots of an idea begin to sprout in that brain of his. 

For the first time in a while, he dares to think about  _ when _ they get out, instead of  _ if _ . 

“I’ve got to sleep on my right,” Link says, when it’s time to bed down. “My shoulder is aching.” Rhett nods mildly. He probably doesn't want to sleep the way they slept the previous night anyway, Link reminds himself. Like he always says, he’s not a cuddler.

They settle in, Link on his right and tucked under the blanket; Rhett with his back to him, hogging the comforter. They lie in comfortable quiet, and Link allows himself to feel a little bit proud – what other straight male friendship would survive this kind of imprisonment as well as they were?

_ Oh yeah, Link. You’re totally straight.  _ He squeezes his eyes shut. 

Rhett’s voice makes him jump. “It’s kinda cold tonight, don’t you think?”

“Mmmhmm,” he says noncommittally. It’s not that bad, not really.

“You okay, under that blanket?” A warm foot nudges his calf. “Feels cold to me.”

His heartbeat speeds up a little. “Well, now that you say it …”

“We could share both covers. Then we’ll both be warm.” There’s a different tone to Rhett’s voice. Unfamiliar. Good. 

“Body heat is good for that, too,” Link says, overly casual.

Rhett lifts up the comforter, but doesn’t turn to face him. “C’mon, then.”

Link fits against his back like he’s meant to be there. Rhett was right, it is warm. He finds himself hyperfocused on the slow expansion of Rhett’s chest as he breathes, and slides his arm over him to feel the rise and fall.

“ _ Link _ ,” Rhett whispers.

“Yeah?” 

He doesn’t reply. Link’s fingertips drift, finding the fuzz of hair on his chest, the peak of a nipple.

“‘Nipples are the home of the sex drive’,” Rhett mutters, and Link giggles. The vibration of it travels through the contact points of their bodies, and Rhett draws in a sudden shuddery breath, his hips pressing back into Link’s thighs.

Link goes very still. Rhett is … he …  _ oh. _ His mind lights up with the realisation.

He runs the hand from Rhett’s chest down his side to his hip, circling there with an unvoiced question.

“Yeah,” Rhett says, breathlessly. “Pleaseyes.” 

Link’s hand finds him fully hard when he sneaks it under his shorts. The fabric restricts his arm movement somewhat, but they have spare underwear, not spare sheets. Rhett squirms against him, hips moving with each tug, head tipping back so that Link gets a faceful of curls. He turns his head to avoid hitting his nose on the other man’s skull, and it brings his mouth near to Rhett's ear.

He hesitates. There’s a line here, one that they’re perilously close to crossing if they haven’t done so already.

“ _ Link, _ ” Rhett whines, and Link draws his knee up to press hard between his legs. 

“That good?” he whispers, and if it wasn’t before he spoke it certainly is after, because Rhett jerks bodily and Link feels warm wetness on his hand.

_ That’s so gross _ , is his initial reaction.  _ But it’s hot _ , comes crawling after, like the cold sweat down his spine.

[Day Ten]

Link awakes with his face tucked firmly into Rhett's neck, all four of his limbs wrapped around him in a grip that would impress an octopus.

He pulls back enough to see Rhett peering back at him with sleepy eyes.

“Sorry,” he mumbles. Rhett just smiles and flops back against his pillow.

_ So, last night happened. How do I feel about that? _ He doesn’t know. 

No, that’s kind of a lie – he suspects he  _ does  _ know, and is frightened to look too close in case he’s right.

He thinks back to the time Christie had tried to talk to him about  _ the Rhett thing _ . She’d been so kind and careful, but Link had panicked and shut her down so harshly that it had blown up into a massive fight and she’d never brought it up again, besides a stern talk the next day about how she wouldn’t tolerate any bigotry of any kind in her house, no matter what motivated it.

Well, he’ll have to talk to her about it now. He’s left himself no other choice.

The task of the day is for Rhett to shave Link’s two-week beard.

“Thank God,” Link says, “It’s so  _ itchy _ .” He didn’t miss the way Rhett had frozen when he saw the word shave, before he realised which of them was to be the shavee. Link would go without sleep and food and water before he did that to Rhett, he promises himself now. 

It sounds like a simple task, but it comes with a strict set of instructions – giving their captives a blade is, naturally, a risky move.

The equipment is in a box in the usual way. They must complete the task within an hour, the instructions say, or ‘security measures will be taken’. The wording is as vague as it is ominous. 

Link sits on the closed toilet seat and lathers up. Despite being the least sexual task they’ve had in days, Rhett’s proximity, the sharpness of the razor and the baring of Link’s throat still make it a thoroughly intimate one.

Over and over again, Rhett’s fingers return to the pulse point under his jaw. Link watches his face, brow furrowed in concentration. He looks paler than he should, and Link wonders if he lied when he said he slept better than usual.

With a final rasp of the razor down Link’s jaw, Rhett announces the job done. He flicks the razor closed with a flourish that becomes a fumble.

“Ow!” he sticks his finger in his mouth.

“Hey, you’re the one who’s meant to be good with the sharp things!” Link wipes his face with a towel. “I let you put that near my carotid, man.”

“Did I cut  _ you _ ?” Rhett takes a few steps back, finger still in his mouth, and tilts his head appreciatively. “I coulda been a barber.” 

“Is it deep?” 

“Nah, it’s nothin’. Come on, I wanna do some reading today.”

They sit at opposite ends of the bed, but Rhett’s foot rests oh-so-casually against Link’s calf. Link tries to read, he really does, but his mind is in a wandering mood, and several pages in he realises he doesn’t even know what genre he’s picked.

Instead, he watches Rhett over the top of his paperback, because he’s acting funny. He’s reading with the book close to his face, for one, like he needs an eye test, following the lines of text with a finger. He’s normally a fast reader, but today he’s slow to turn the pages. Every now and then his finger returns to his mouth and he chews on it. When Link catches sight of a bright line of red, he realises that it’s his cut finger.

Rhett catches him watching. With just his eyes, Link tries to express  _ what the hell you doin’? _ .

“This is a good bit,” Rhett says, closing the book and holding it out to him. “Try page fifty and go from there.”

He does. Page fifty is mid-chapter of what appears to be a scene in a restaurant. What Rhett apparently wants him to witness, however, is the rusty red smudges over two words halfway down the page.

_ hello. There  _

He flicked to the next page, then the next, until he saw more red. Ten pages further, and the odd words were beginning to spell out a message.

_ We dis covered your letter inside The sand which . Thanks you _

Smart. Gross, but smart. He hands the book back.

“Clever, if a little creepy,” he says. 

“You can read some more later, see if you think it’s any good. I was thinking, if we finished some more tasks, they might be kind enough to swap these out for some new titles.”

Link sees what he’s doing.  _ Don’t oversell, _ he thinks.

“Cool,” he says, injecting enough disinterest to almost sound dismissive. “I better finish this one, then.” 

He barely raised his head when he heard the soft click that always preceded an announcement by the voice.

“The water will be activated for the next sixty minutes –”

“Shotgun,” Rhett says quickly, getting up. “You hardly left any hot yesterday.”

Link waves him on, intent on getting invested in his book, but looks up just in time to see Rhett turn sheet-white and stagger.

“Woah buddy,” Link jumps to his feet, catching Rhett as he sways dangerously. “Sit down, head between your knees.” He knows this drill, having been through it himself more than once. Rhett obeys passively.

“Think I got up too fast, that’s all,” he says to the floor. Link touches his forehead with the back of his hand; it’s kind of clammy, but then it  _ is _ Rhett.

“Maybe you should shower sitting down,” he suggests. “Just in case you go over again. It’s a long way for you.”

“Ha  _ ha _ ,” Rhett says. “You can’t be too concerned if the tall jokes are coming out.” 

Link is concerned, though, and listens carefully for any thump that could be Rhett hitting the deck whilst the shower runs. He makes his own wash a quick one, not even trying to stick to his usual routine so that he can get back in the room as soon as possible. When he does, he finds Rhett asleep, curled up around his book.

_ Maybe it’s just an off day _ , he rationalises. Yesterday was  _ a lot _ , after all.

Food arrives. Rhett stands without wobbling, but Link makes him be the one to stand in the doorway, just in case. It feels strange to step even a little way over the threshold of the room. The short corridor is several degrees cooler, and goosebumps erupt all over his arms and back as he grabs the box and makes a hasty retreat.

Rhett takes small mouthfuls of his sandwich, and Link finishes before him. 

Link wakes in the night because he’s too hot, and the bed is shaking.

No, not the bed – Rhett.

“Hey, buddy, wake up,” he mumbles. “You’re havin’ a nightmare.”

“I’m awake,” Rhett says, through chattering teeth. “Jus’ cold.” His skin is hot to the touch.

“Shit,” Link says. “You’ve got a fever.” He pulls the blankets back, making Rhett complain loudly.

“I know, I’m sorry. I’m gonna get you some water.” 

There were some filled bottles in the bathroom, so he grabs those and one of the towels to use as a lighter blanket. He helps Rhett sit up and sip the water, holding it for him because, for once, his hands were steadier. Once he’s done and lying back down, Link stays seated and awake, watching for several hours. When Rhett’s fever seems to break, he wipes his face with a dampened corner of the towel before snuggling down beside him.

It’ll be better in the morning, he hopes.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daily updates until the end, folks! Bowyer is a STAR*. Does that make up for the cliffhanger? *ducks*
> 
> *the beard-shaving task is a small reference to a fic she hasn't posted yet, and how she's a much meaner person than I am.


	11. Fissure

[Day Eleven]

It isn’t better.

When Link blinks awake, it’s to pale, sweaty skin and shallow breathing. Panic breaks through his normal morning haze like a foot through a door.

“Rhett?” His skin looks greyish, his face slack. Link rolls him onto his side, which is the main thing he remembers from the first aid classes his mom used to run – get them on their side in case they throw up, make sure the airway is clear, and get help as soon as you can.

“Hey!” he yells and waves at the camera. “We need help! He’s sick, it’s real bad …”

The voice says nothing. 

“I know you’re watching!” he snarls. “You’re quick enough to make your dumb little noises when I’ve done something wrong. At least fucking _ding_ to say you’ll help him.”

There is silence for another thirty long seconds.   
Then a single chime sounds.

“ _Thank you_ .” It’s probably the most aggressive thanks he’s said in his entire life, but he’s beyond caring. He hurries back to Rhett, grabbing his limp hand. Why the _fuck_ did he go back to sleep? _So fucking careless. So lazy_. 

“I’m here,” he says. “Will you open your eyes for me, baby?” He thinks it’s a slip of the tongue, that pet name, but he also hopes that Rhett will wake up and scowl and tell him _‘don’t call me that, man’_ the way he had that time when Link got staggeringly drunk in college. It’s the only thing he remembers that night, Rhett’s look of amused disgust, swatting him on the shoulder and pushing him away. _‘Don’t call me that, Link! People’ll think you’re …_ ”

“Please wake up,” he says. “We don’t have to do it again, I promise. They can’t let us starve to death, we’ll just tell them no.”

“Subject two,” the voice says, emotionless as ever. “Kneel in the corner facing the wall. Help is outside the door. Do not turn around. Do not talk.”

Link is torn, not wanting to leave Rhett’s side.

 _But that’s just for you._ If being in the corner is what’s required for the voice to help Rhett, then that’s what Link needs to do. He squeezes Rhett’s hand. “I’ll be just over there, bo. the whole time.”

No sooner is he there on his knees than he hears the familiar click of the door opening. Several pairs of feet enter, walking briskly – three, he thinks. Probably three. He doesn’t dare look.

“Stay there!” a voice barks. Link wasn’t planning on moving, but he flinches anyway. “Hands on the wall!” 

His palms are sweating so bad that he thinks he’ll mark the paint, but he places them flat, level with his shoulders. Something brushes the back of his hair. Must be one of them behind him, then. He can hear two voices, speaking low, coming from over where the bed is.

The urge to turn his head and look is incredible. This is how Lot’s wife felt, he thinks, when she was told not to look back on the destruction of Sodom. But the people giving orders here are no angels.

A whimper escapes him totally involuntarily, and he stifles it, but not soon enough. Whoever is behind him grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls.

“I told you to shut up!”

 _No you didn’t_ , Link thinks. _The_ voice _told me to shut up_. The back of his neck prickles. Is this the voice? This man? He sounds angry, gruff. He has a Midwestern accent and a slight lisp. Link can’t equate it with the cold robotic tone of their daily instructor.

The man pulls again, a hard, sharp tug. “Eyes forward!”

“They are!” Link snaps before he can stop himself. In a quick movement the man shoves Link forward, smacking his face into the wall. It jars his sore nose, and there’s a crack as some part of his glasses break. He cries out, startled, and hears an answering noise from the bed – Rhett, confused and disorientated. 

_He’s awake!_ He thinks, with no small relief – but what an awakening. He prays that Rhett doesn’t go on the offensive.

Something cold presses against the back of Link’s neck.

“I’m not giving any more warnings. Understand?” 

Link doesn’t speak or move.

“Good boy.”

“Link?” Rhett’s voice is thready and weak.

“Your buddy is fine,” the man says. “You just let the doc finish with you and you’ll _both_ be fine.”

After that there’s only the buzz of low and unfamiliar voices and a rustling of some kind of packaging.

“Relax your arm,” someone says – to Rhett, Link assumes. 

“What are you putting in there?” Rhett’s voice is shaky. If ‘the doc’ replies, Link doesn’t hear him.

He’s pretty sure his nose is bleeding again, but he doesn’t dare move his arms or even change the angle of his head to look down. The muscles of his arms are burning, and the drip of probably-almost-definitely-blood is thick and sickening as it crawls down over his lips.

He stays like that for an eternity and a half, until finally the man says, “Count to twenty, nice and slow. Then you can turn around.”

The door clicks closed at thirteen, and Link thinks it’s worth risking it. He drags himself up, clawing his fingers against the wall to stand. Rhett is propped up by cushions against the headboard of the bed, looking dazed and sickly but with colour in his cheeks.

Link makes a sound of desperate relief, only slightly tempering the enthusiasm with which he throws himself on Rhett and hugs him tight.

“Not that I don’t appreciate having the breath squeezed out of me,” Rhett wheezes. “But you might wanna be careful, I’m a little delicate right now.” 

Link lets him go, but he has to keep touching him, quick brushes of his hands under the facade of checking him over. 

“Did you see their faces? What did they do to you? Does anything hurt?”

“They gave me fluids and a shot, but they wouldn’t say what. They had surgical masks.” His hand catches Link’s jaw. “Your nose is going again. Did they hit you?”

“Just pushed me into the wall.” He doesn’t mention the gun; the distress in Rhett’s eyes is bad enough as it is. “What happened to you?”

“I’unno,” Rhett shrugs. “I’d been feeling crappy for a few days. A bug, maybe? Or dehydration. Or stress …” 

Link gets it – it’s not as if there’s lack of possible contributing factors. 

“Try and rest up,” he says, hoping that Rhett is on the mend after whatever the doc gave him, that this isn’t just a respite before his condition worsens. “Let's hope that whatever we have to do today isn’t too strenuous.” He’ll shoulder more of the work, if he can.

But it seems that even their jailers had some sort of heart between them (more likely, Link thinks, they are protecting their investment. Rhett can’t be streamed if he’s dead).

“We’ve got the day off,” he says, only to find Rhett has dozed off, head lolling against his chest.

Partly to stop him having a cricked neck when he wakes up, partly to reassure himself that he _will_ wake up, Link rouses him long enough to get him laid back down.

When they’re both settled, he picks up Rhett’s book and reads the full message so far, in all its disjointed, grammatically desperate glory.

_Hello, There_

_We dis covered your letter inside The sand which . Thanks you. You can help us ? if You are we Will knot 4 get. will tell you were a good person Who help us..._

So, Rhett is trying to get the guy (or otherwise) to go to the police. It’s as sound a plan as anything else they could accomplish stuck in here, he supposes, although he has little to no hope of it actually working.

His gaze travels to Rhett, whose face is slack in sleep, heavy bags under his eyes and a new thinness to his face.

It’s the only shot they’ve got at the moment, so Link is going to do it. And he’s not going to faint.

His bloody nose has dried, and he’s loath to disturb it again, so he chews on his finger, worrying the side of his pointer nail until he tastes copper. Then he adds to Rhett’s existing message:

_we have child. s who need us back home._

He wants to express his worry for Rhett, too, but can’t work out how with the limited words.

_We are scare. Please._

_From linked and_

He flicks through the book, trying to find an appropriate substitute for Rhett’s name. He settles on ‘hat’.

He hopes there wasn’t anything else Rhett wanted to add before he sent the books out of the room. For all he knows, they’ll ignore them anyway. 

Link walks to the middle of the room, looking directly up at the camera.

“Hi,” he says, trying to keep his voice quiet. “Thanks for helping my friend. And it was kind of you to let him rest. I was just wondering – if we give you these books back, would it be okay to have some more? If that’s alright, I’ll put them in the corridor.” _Why would the guy even check inside the books_? he wonders suddenly. He’s probably not expecting a message. He’s going to have to say something to prompt a closer look, without being too obvious.

“Um,” he adds. “I’d really recommend this one.” He waggles the marked up book close to the lens. “It doesn’t get real good til page fifty.” He can’t be any more obvious than that, not without potentially making the other watchers suspicious. God, he hopes this works.

There’s no response from the voice, but after a tense wait, the door pops open. Link hurriedly piles all the books just over the threshold.

“Thank you,” he says to the camera, but mostly to the one person who might almost be on their side. “ _Thank you_.”

They are given boxed salads and breadsticks for dinner, and three paperbacks with no hidden messages between the pages. 

Link had forgotten how fresh food even _tasted_. Rhett still doesn’t eat with his usual speed, but he puts plenty away.

“I sent the message,” Link whispers, as he fusses with the blankets. Rhett squeezes his hand. His face tilts up, looking at Link like he’s just asked for something, but either Link has gone spontaneously deaf or Rhett didn’t say anything at all.

“What?”

Rhett’s eyes move very deliberately down to look at Link’s lips, then back up again.

“Oh. You, uh. Sure?” he’s already leaning in as he speaks. His lips brush over Rhett’s in a dry, gentle press. What he wouldn’t give for some lip balm right about now.

Rhett’s fingers thread into his hair. It pulls a little, the same place the man pulled it. Earlier he’d been nothing but frightened, but now, when it’s Rhett’s hand making him hurt … well, that’s different. A good kind of different, one that makes him exhale a low sound into Rhett’s mouth.

They kiss a while longer, comfortable in it heading nowhere. Link’s lower face feels warm from beard burn.

  
  


[Day Twelve]

If you’d told the Link of nine days ago that he’d think ‘make out naked’ was a relatively easy task for him and Rhett to complete, he’d probably have passed out from the trauma of it. As it is, he thinks that the room is still being gentle on them, giving Rhett a light workload. He’s grateful. 

They stop reluctantly at the sound of the chime, and the rest of the day they spend carefully not touching each other. Link catches Rhett watching him no less than five times when he looks up from his book.

After dinner, when the lights are off and they’re on their separate sides of the bed, Rhett presses up behind him. He rubs against Link’s ass as he jerks him off with a spit-wet hand, and then they sleep. Hours later, Link wakes up in a sweat, sure that Rhett isn’t breathing. It was just a dream, but Rhett lets him cling until the lights switch back on.

[Day Thirteen]

“I knew you exaggerated for the show!” Rhett says. 

“It’s different with food,” Link argues. “It’s usually the texture making me retch, or the idea of what I’m eating that makes me gag.”

[Day Fourteen]

Link drops the soft serve cone he’s supposed to be _slowly enjoying_ within thirty seconds of Rhett handing it to him. It lands on the floor with a sad splat.

Link freezes up. It’s unsalvageable. He’s waiting for the bad chime, and he’s shaking.

It doesn’t come, but there’s only one portion of cold pasta for dinner. Rhett insists they share it.

[Day Fifteen ] 

It’s the first out and out fight they have in the room. Link can’t even remember what it’s about, but he’s shouting and it feels so _good_ , until it doesn’t. Rhett ignores him, even after the lights go out.

[Day Seventeen]

The tasks are getting stranger. Rhett has to kneel on all fours whilst Link paints undulating shapes copied from the instructions across his long back, the camera following his every move. The shake in his hands increases with each shape he messes up, and he’s crying in frustration by the time the chime tells him they’re done.

After, Rhett holds him and whispers comforting nonsense in his ear. It’s the first time they’ve talked in two days.

[Day Eighteen]

They wake up late, still pressed close. Rhett pets the short beard growing in on Link’s face, tracing the line of his jaw with his fingers, then his mouth. It’s slow, explorative and face to face. Link’s nails draw red lines parallel to Rhett’s spine as he rocks into him slowly. It’s only after, finished but still wound together, when he’s waiting for the chime, that he remembers this wasn’t a task. 

There is no email in the inbox. They clean up as best they can with one of the pairs of boxers. Link entertains the idea of asking Rhett if it would make sense to share the shower when the water comes on later. Then there would be no dispute about hot water or splitting the time evenly. 

They wait. Rhett reads a book aloud, Link’s head in his lap. He doesn’t listen to the words so much as the familiar sounds of Rhett’s voice.

The water doesn’t turn on. The door doesn’t open. Night doesn’t come. It’s still day when they fall asleep, and day again when they wake up.

[Day Twenty]

They began rationing the water yesterday, and Link can already feel himself drying out. He’s frightened of his lips cracking, unable to bear the thought of suffering an outbreak on top of all this shit. He doesn’t want to be found dead with a mouthful of sores. _Here lies Link Neal and his Mouth Herpes._

The bottle of lube says it’s water based, so he puts it on like moisturiser. If it tastes weird, Rhett doesn’t say.

[Day Twenty-One] 

They put the water in reach of the bed, to conserve energy. Rhett finds the chocolate bar, forgotten under the bed from over a week ago. They have one square each. Link lets it melt on his tongue.

“What happened to conserving energy?” He asks Rhett later, as the other man moves in on him.

“Just kissing,” Rhett promises. “We don’t need to ration that, not if we’ve been stockpiling all this time.” _All our lives_ , he doesn’t say. _We might not have enough time to make up for it._

[Day Twenty-Two]

New silence falls, as a background hum Link didn’t previously register cuts out. The lights switch off, and don’t return.

[Day Twenty-Five] 

It is always night, these days, and Link is so tired he can hardly lift his head. He keeps checking that Rhett is still alive – sometimes, Rhett says, he does it twice within five minutes, but Link doesn't remember that.

His head is on Rhett’s chest so he can listen to his fragile heartbeat. Sometimes he mistakes it for the clock, but they don’t have a clock in the room.

He blinks, and it is day time. It’s so bright, and he tries to cry out as he hides his eyes, but his dry throat won’t make a sound. 

Rhett is still sleeping and Link is going to wake him up, but he’s still working out which of their tangled limbs belong to him when a hand appears on what turns out to be Rhett’s arm.

He looks at the person attached to the hand and the first thing he thinks is _spaceman_ . The second he thinks is _beekeeper_ , and the third is _touching Rhett_ . He is overcome by a possessive, _protective_ rage.

There is a phenomenon that appears in the human species called ‘hysterical strength’, a sudden display of physical ability beyond the normal limits of the human physique, the sort of thing that allows parents to lift cars off children. In this case, it allows Link Neal, who ran out of water almost three days ago and has been living off single chocolate squares for five, to launch himself at the man in the hazmat suit with a reckless ferocity that is terrifying to behold.

There is a lot of shouting and more people in the room than Link can imagine existing in one small space. He’ll fight them all, if it means they don’t take Rhett away from him.

But hysterical strength or no, Link is not anywhere near the shape he’d need to be to accomplish such a task, and besides – the hazmats have sedatives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The end is in sight! Also, I'm terrible with numbers - there are thirteen chapters, not fourteen.  
> My undying thanks to Bowyer as always <3


	12. Aftershocks

[(Freedom) Day One]

What wakes Rhett isn’t the oxygen mask on his face, the many hands that lift him onto a stretcher, or even Link’s quieting cries as the sedation takes effect. It’s the sunlight – or, rather, the heat that comes with it: the tarmac-melting Wyoming midsummer that they carry him out into. 

The sky is blue, a strong cerulean shade, and ever so bright. The sun reflects off the crinkly foil blanket that rustles when he tries to move and look around.

The sky vanishes as the gurney bumps up into the back of an ambulance.

“Well, hey there.” A face hovers over him. They’re wearing a mask, like the man who’d injected him in the room, but they sound kind and they have eyes that crinkle in the corners. “Are you in any pain?”

Is he? He doesn’t think so. He shakes his head, the oxygen mask chafing his cheeks.

“Hold tight, we’re gonna get you to the hospital.” Must be a paramedic, then. That’s good. They do something to his arm that spikes, and when he looks at it there's an IV in the crook of his elbow. Man, Link is gonna hate that.

_ Link _ .

“Woah! Sir, lie back, lie back you’re safe –”

Rhett doesn’t care if  _ he’s  _ safe, because that doesn’t matter unless  _ Link  _ is safe too. He tries to say as much, but his words just fog up the plastic cup of the mask so he pushes it off.

“Whurslink?” he asks urgently. “We needta go back for’m.”

“Is that your friend’s name?” the paramedic asks. “He’s right here – look.” They point, and Rhett cranes his neck. There’s another gurney parallel to his, within touching distance, and he sees Link’s familiar profile. But he’s too still to be awake, and his mouth is closed and his eyes half-open.

“Is he dead?” Rhett says in a very small, very tight voice. His eyes burn, but he’s too dehydrated to cry.

“No, sweetie, he’s fine. We had to give him something to calm him down a little, and the oxygen mask frightened him so we gave him a cannula, see?” The paramedic points to the small clear tubing running beneath Link’s nose. “I can put one on you, if you like?”

It’s phrased as a question, but the paramedic is already putting it in place – Rhett submits to it quietly, unwilling to take his eyes off Link.

“Can I touch him?” He waits for permission before reaching his arm across the gap, touching the bare shoulder that peeks over the top of the foil blanket, finding it soft and warm and alive. Link responds to the touch, slowly moving his head and staring at Rhett with heavy-lidded eyes.

Rhett withdraws his arm, too tired to hold it any longer. 

“I gotcha, bo,” he says. He’s not sure if the words penetrate Link’s drugged haze, but he hopes that the sound of his voice is at least a reassurance. “We’re out, Link. We’re goin’ home.”

  
  


***

[Day Two]

Link has never thought of himself as a bad patient. A little whiny, sure, but generally compliant and happy to sleep until he was functional again.

“I want to see Rhett,” he demands for the umpteenth time that morning. 

“Mr Neal, we’ve been over this. We need you to answer these questions, then the police will take your statement.”

“I want to see him first.”

“It’s better for the case if you each make statements separately.”

“Why? We were both there.” He picks at the itchy dressing taped over the inside of his elbow, trying not to look at the tube coming out of it. He feels like he has stuff stuck all over him, what with the IVs and the heart monitor patches. Since he woke up, the nurses have turned the bleepy part of the monitor off because he kept setting off the alarms. He wonders what the point of even having them there is, if not to monitor that.

“You’ll have to ask your lawyer, when she arrives.”

“Can I see my family, then?” He’s getting angry again. Angry is fine, it’s better than the random crying that has plagued him since waking up in this hospital room four hours ago.

“I told you, Mr Neal.” the nurse is starting to get impatient, clutching his pen and paperwork in his hands. Link doesn’t have the emotional energy to spare to feel bad. “They’re being flown out as soon as possible. Can we please go through these questions, then I’ll see what I can do about seeing Mr McLaughlin.”

It’s not a promise, but it’s progress.

“Your name?”

“Charles Lincoln Neal III.”

“And how old are you?”

“39.”

The nurse frowns. “Birth date?”

“June 1st, 1978.”

“Mr Neal, it’s June 12th. You’re 40.”

He missed his birthday. Rhett missed his anniversary. They forgot. Jessie is gonna be mad –

“Mr Neal? Charles?”

“I want to see Rhett.”

After his police interview, he’s too tired to ask again. He’s answered a thousand questions, gone over the events more times than he could ever want to repeat them. There’s only one thing he doesn’t tell them. It’s because they didn’t ask, he tells himself. He rubs at his eyes, like that will scrub the ghost image of  _ that _ envelope and it contents out of his mind.

‘Nothing — nothing leaked?’ The thought of their fans seeing any of the footage makes him want to throw up. 

‘I can’t promise anything won’t in the future,” the interviewing officer says. “That's something you should be prepared for. But it might never happen.’

Can they continue the show with that hanging over their heads? The internet is forever, after all. He tries to imagine warning Stevie about it – “ _ So, about that Rhett and Link sex tape _ …”

Has anyone even told Stevie they’ve been found?

He spends that night ricocheting between uneasy dozing and sudden shocks of frightening wakefulness.

_ They’d tell you if something happened to him. _

_ You’d know. _

  
  


[Day Three]

“D’you think I did okay?” Rhett asks Gillian, his nurse, as she changes his drip for a fresh bag. She’s nice, he likes her. She’d offered to stay while the cops talked to him for hour upon hour.

“You did great,” she soothes. She has five kids, her youngest is starting college in the fall. Rhett bets she's a great mom. “Arm up.” 

He rushes to obey. 

Hospitals are noisy, and every little sound makes him twitch. He slept a little in the ambulance, but he’s not slept for longer than an hour at a time since he arrived.

He’s in a private room, at least. Or kind of – it’s a small room with three bed berths, two empty, and he can see the back of a security guard’s head outside the meshed glass pane in the door. 

“Guess what?” Gillian says, when she’s finished clearing the used IV paraphernalia from the bed. 

Rhett freezes, and the heart monitor bleeps anxiously.  _ What does she want me to guess? What if it’s wrong? _

Gillian tuts. “Sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’ll just tell ya – you’re all done with the interviews, so that means …”

“I can see Link?”

“You sure can. And I was wonderin’ if the two of you would do the ward a big favour? It’s absolutely fine to say no, but I think you’ll be up for it – I wouldn’t have asked, else. Could we move Mr Neal’s bed in here? It would free up a couple of beds for other patients.”

Rhett doesn’t have to think twice – this time he knows what the right answer is.

***

Link feels embarrassed, sitting on his bed and being rolled along the corridor when he has two functioning (although admittedly slightly wobbly) legs. He hunches down and keeps his eyes on his lap as people stare at him wheeling past. 

He’s going to see Rhett. He’s going to see Rhett. Rhett wants to see  _ him _ . He’d started to wonder if Rhett had said no, and they just didn’t want to hurt his feelings, didn’t want him to freak out again.

They’d offered him a chance to set up a meeting with the others they found in the rooms. Because there had been  _ rooms, _ plural. Three, in fact, and five more ready and waiting for people to be locked in them. By all accounts, Rhett and Link had had it the best down there – some of the victims were in the ICU. But at least one was up and talking about forming support groups and lawsuits. He’d said no, and spent the next hour throwing up in the bathroom with the door open. 

The orderlies park him by a bay that, from the outside, looks identical to the one he’s just left, down to the security guard who checks their ID. He was there in case of the press, the police said. Everything seems to be okay, and they open the wide doors to wheel him through.

And, there he is. Sitting up in bed, crisp white linens tucked in over his lap, hair tied back in a clumsy loose ponytail.

“Watch it!” one of the orderlies yelps, but Link is already off the bed, thankful they’d disconnected his IV for the trip along the hall. The linoleum is cold on his bare feet, and then he’s there, right in front of Rhett.

Though they both have plenty to say, neither of them  _ has  _ to say anything. Rhett buries his face in the side of Link’s neck and they hold each other until there’s a polite cough from the doorway.

In his arms, Rhett stiffens up, but that just makes Link hold onto him tighter.

“You’re Link, then?” says a voice. He wants to ignore it, wants it to go away. “We need to get you connected back up, mister.”

Rhett pushes at his chest. That’s why he lets go, reluctantly, not because the nurse says to. 

“Link,” Rhett says, low and quiet. “This is Gillian. She’s nice.”  _ So you be nice too _ , is not said aloud, but it is clearly implied.

Link twists to look at her warily. She’s short, probably mid-fifties, there are colourful stickers on her lanyard ID, and she has a definite mom energy to her. Link expects her next words to be something about eating his greens and not playing out too late. Even though he’s already heard her speak, he’s surprised when she doesn’t have a Southern accent.

“Could you  _ please  _ go get in your bed?” It’s been parked up in the next space along, and he gives Rhett’s arm a quick squeeze before complying. He sits cross-legged on top of the sheets whilst Gillian plugs him back in and gets the bag feeding all the sugars, salts and water he needs to replenish. 

The whole time, he and Rhett look at each other. He thinks it’s probably freaky, but he doesn’t care.

“I’ll leave you two alone for a bit,” she says when she’s done. “Let you catch up. Hit the button if you need anything.” 

“Is there another way?” Link asks. She seems surprised to hear him talk – he hasn’t spoken at all since entering the room, he realises upon reflection. “I … I don’t like the noise it makes,” he says, in an attempt to explain. He’d used it once in the other room and the soft chime of confirmation it made on being pressed had nearly sent him spiralling into a panic. It must seem so silly to her, he thinks, and ducks his head in embarrassment.

“Nevermind,” he says. “It’s fine.”

“Well, just in case – there’s an internal phone here. The number of the ward desk is on the sticker. Just wheel your pole over with you  _ carefully _ , okay?”

He nods, feeling tears well up in his eyes and looking away to hide them.

The door swings shut as she leaves.

At least, he thinks, he’s not tied up to the heart monitor any more. Rhett is still attached to his.

“Can I come over?” he asks in a whisper. He looks around the ceiling and the walls for cameras. He can’t see any, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. 

Rhett nods, and scoots to one side. The beds are narrow, but Link can just about squeeze in.

“Hey,” he says, when he’s tucked tight at Rhett’s side. He sounds breathless, like he’s just run a mile. He doesn’t know where they stand, but he knows that, as long as he’s somewhere in Rhett’s general vicinity, he’ll survive. 

Rhett lifts the sheet wordlessly, bringing over their heads and blocking out the rest of the room. 

“Hey,” he whispers back, and leans in to kiss him. Link’s heart rises to the surface – and how could he not have noticed it was sunk?

***

Link is tucked against him, head resting on his chest. They’d returned to their separate beds when Gillian came back and tutted at them, and they’d eaten small servings of bland pasta. Link had crept back again after, the wheels of his IV pole clicking across the floor.

Rhett hears his breaths start to deepen and nudges him. “S’not night. No sleeping.”

Link lifts his head enough to talk. “It’s dark outside,” he says.

So it is. Rhett blinks. “Oh.” 

Link laughs, his breath hot through the flimsy fabric of Rhett’s hospital gown. 

There’s a button on the bedside cabinet to turn off the light. He presses it and then it’s night properly. Just the two of them, breathing in the dark. 

Link’s fingertips brush his knee and he jumps.

“Sorry.” 

The fingers linger there, then move slowly up his thigh.

“Link,” he says. “We shouldn’t do that, not here.”

“No one’s watching.” His fingers play with the hem of Rhett’s gown. It tickles.

“Link,’ he says, firmly now. “I don’t want to.”

The hand leaves. “Okay,” Links says. His voice is unsteady and he sits up, swinging his legs off the bed.

“I didn’t mean – you don’t have to  _ go _ ,” Rhett says. “I want you here.” 

Link sits on the edge of the bed and breathes. In, out. In, out.

“Okay,” he says again, climbing back in and pressing close in the narrow space. “I’m sorry. This is just … it’s confusing. I’m confused.”

Rhett squeezes him tight, pressing a kiss into his hair. 

“Me too.”

[Day Four]

The officer who tells them about the guy called Adam won’t stop looking at their hands.  _ So what if we hold hands?  _ Rhett wants to shout at him, but he doesn’t want to upset Link any further.

“He contacted the authorities and we’re keeping him safe from any retaliation. Him and his family.”

“What about our families?” Link has been on edge since the cop arrived – since before that, even. Since his appointment with the psychologist that morning. They hadn’t had time to talk about it yet, but Rhett can see he’s not far off detonation.

“We’ve got extra patrols checking in on them multiple times a day until they leave for their flights out here.” The cop’s voice is a practiced, measured calm. Used to dealing with  _ victims _ . “Adam’s lawyer wants us to talk to you about a deal.”

Link’s nails dig into Rhett’s hand. It hurts, but Rhett doesn’t mind.

Their own lawyer chimes in. Her name is Ada, and she’s whip smart and sharp tongued. Rhett is a little scared of her, to be honest. “They’re requesting immunity.”

Both Rhett and Link answer at the same time, with totally opposite opinions.

“I’m open to that,” Rhett says, while Link exclaims, “ _ Absolutely not! _ ”

Link is still holding Rhett’s hand but he looks at him, outraged. “Rhett, he helped them  _ kidnap  _ us!”

“He helped us out – and he’s  _ fourteen _ , Link. They wanna try him as an adult! We did dumb shit when we were fourteen – remember the rocks on the roof? What if we’d killed someone?” 

“Are you seriously comparing that to what he helped them do? They’re an organisation! An outfit!”

“If he hadn’t called that tip in, we’d still be down there.” The thought makes Rhett’s heart hurt. They wouldn’t have spent all those days starving – the group had bailed at the first sign of trouble, probably tipped off, which was why they’d been left to starve down in their prison. He imagines them being down there day after day after day, until the brightness was entirely gone from Link’s eyes and they were both just emotionless husks, obeying the every whim of some anonymous cabal of deep web users with too much virtual cash in their wallets.

“He’s offering us names,” the cop interrupts. “A lot of names, contacts. Locations. Stuff that could help us nail some nasty people.”

“I’m not saying to lump him in with the rest of them,” Link says tiredly. Rhett squeezes his hand.

“I think we need to talk this over,” Ada says, swooping in. “Privately.”

It’s a long talk, with lots of legal terms that Rhett pretends to understand, but mostly go over his head. There’s a lot of talk of compromise, responsibility and plea bargains.

No matter what they disagree on, Link keeps holding his hand.

At the end of the day, they agree, that no matter what he’d done to put them there, the kid had been brave. He’d risked a lot: not just his own life, but those of his two dependent siblings. 

“I’ll write up a plea bargain,” Ada said, packing up her briefcase. “And tell them they’re really fucking lucky you boys are decent folks.They’ve got their DNA, they’ve got a strong witness — it’s just a matter of time ‘til they catch those assholes. And I’ll be ready for ‘em”

They don’t ask what the other victims have requested of their own lawyers. Rhett, for one, can’t deal with any extra weight on his shoulders.

When they end up back in Rhett's bed again that night, Link is restless.

“Wanna talk about your appointment?” Rhett asks, when it becomes clear that Link isn’t going to bring it up on his own.

“Not really, but I will.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, I do. It impacts you in kind of a big way.”

Rhett waits. It’s a good five minutes before Link starts talking.

“Dr Fletcher talked a lot about codependency,” he begins, and Rhett has dreaded this talk. Link seems to feel him shrink away, and grabs for him.

“No no no, listen to me, Rhett.”

He can do that, he can listen.

“I think … I think we need to talk with our wives. I think we need to put some distance between us and that room.”

Rhett dips his head. Both things he agrees with.

“I think … I need some space. Between us.” Link’s breathing feels like a tremor that goes through the bed. “Because I’ve been feeling these things for a long time, brother. Before the room. I’ve been feeling this for  _ years _ , but it’s all new for you. And I need you to find out if it’s all been a trauma response before this goes any further. Because if it is, and you want to stop – I can deal with that, if we do it now. But I’m worried I won’t if we leave it much longer.”

Rhett nods, stroking his hair and holding him close.

_ Is  _ it new for him? He thinks back over the decades, over the Rhetts and Links of the past. He’s always loved Link, sure, but he’s never been attracted to him. Even that first time in the room, it had been a struggle. It had only really changed after he’d finished, when Link wanted –

The memory makes him flush all over. Yeah, that was when he’d first felt the attraction.

“Okay,” he says. “We’ll try it. Let’s start with a week. One week apart. On one condition.”

“What?”

“We don’t start til we go home. I can’t,” he confesses. “I can’t be alone, here. I need you.”

Link holds him tight. “I couldn’t leave you here if I wanted to.”

[Day Five]

Link paces and tries to figure out what’s wrong with him. He’s off the drip, and the doctors say that physically, neither of them should have any long-lasting health problems, assuming they eat sensibly for the next few months. All of Rhett’s blood tests have come back clear:the conclusion was that he’d had a delayed reaction to whatever drug was in their water, and that was the cause of his feverish state back in the room.

It was fantastic news, better than either of them had privately hoped. Even better, today their families would arrive for a tearful reunion and to discuss what happens next.

And there’s something wrong with Link, because he’s dreading it.

Rhett can’t keep still either, but he’s excited. Link can tell, because the other man can’t stop grinning, a huge dopey smile on his face as they eat breakfast and he chats with Gillian, how he can’t wait for her to meet their kids and their wives.

Rhett’s phone rings. They have new phones: their old cells were nowhere to be found in the old cold war complex where they’d been held. He answers, then doesn’t speak for a long while, except for ‘ _ Uhuh’  _ and ‘ _ wow  _ and ‘ _ okay, I’ll let him know. Thanks for telling me. _ ’

_ Maybe they’ve been delayed _ , Link thinks hopefully, and then cringes with guilt.

Without prompting he sits in the chair by the window – something told him it was a  _ you should sit down for this _ kind of convo. 

Rhett puts both hands on his shoulders and squats until they’re level.

“They caught them.” His eyes are that intense green that mean he’s about to cry. Link’s seen it many times – on both their wedding days, the day Jessie told them she was pregnant (“That’s normally something you tell the dad  _ before _ his best friend, not at the same time,” Link had pointed out. “Everyone knows you’re a package deal,” Jessie snarked back. “I’m basically Jessica McLaughlin-Neal.”) and the day Link told him Lando’s middle name was gonna be James, to name just a few.

“They caught them?”

Rhett nods, and kisses him – first on the lips, but then anywhere on Link’s face he can reach. 

There is a soft knock on the door.

“Boys?” It’s Gillian. They pull apart, Rhett still crouched awkwardly in front of the chair, like a hairy Gollum. Link worries retroactively about his back. Gillian gives them a small smile, but it’s almost sad.

“Your wives are here. Want me to send them up?”

When they arrive on their floor, Jessie steps in first – and Rhett is gone, sweeping her up into her arms like he wasn’t using a chair in the shower just that morning. She’s sobbing and so is he.

“Link?” 

He feels like he might pass out when he sees her. All the trepidation, the dread he’d felt when he woke up – it’s all gone. All that's left is burning relief and love. 

“I missed you so much,” he says.

The smell of her hair is like coming home.

[Day Eight]

There’s no greeting, no small talk when she picks up the phone.

“Jessie,” Christy says. “Can we go for a coffee?”

The two of them meet at a little hipster place not far away, one that always seems to be empty, yet apparently makes enough revenue to pay LA rates. It’s probably a front for something dodgy, but it makes a decent macchiato and the booths offer some level of privacy.

“Oh  _ Lord _ , thank you,” Christy groans as she sinks into the cracked leather. “I needed to get out of there or I was gonna start yelling, and I can’t – it’s not his fault.”

“That bad, huh?” Jessie grimaces as she sips her espresso. Honestly, she looks as tired as Christy feels, and that’s saying something.

“He’s not sleeping. I mean, he  _ is _ sleeping, he’s sleeping all over the place – this morning he nearly gave himself a concussion because he fell asleep  _ in the shower _ . But he doesn’t sleep-sleep, he wakes up in fifteen minutes if it doesn’t happen somewhere precarious and –” she puts her head in her hands and groans.”He has these panic attacks. It’s frightening, and he won’t tell me what sets him off. He’s snappy. He’s an  _ asshole _ , to be quite honest with you. And what kind of bitch does that make me? That my husband was _ kidnapped _ by an organised ring of – of  _ sex criminals _ and was returned alive and intact, and I got him back two days ago and all I can think is  _ wow, what an asshole _ when he –”

“Babe,” Jessie grabs her hands. “Breathe for a sec. Sounds like Link isn’t the only one who’s having panic issues here,uh?”

Christy gives her a watery laugh and wipes at her eyes. “I guess.”

“I think,” Jessie says, “That we moved a little too fast here.”

“It was their idea to stay separate.”

“Yeah, and when have they had a goddamn sensible idea between them?”

Christy takes a gulp of her drink. It tastes a little burnt. “Has he … talked about  _ it _ with you?”

“A little,” Jessie confesses. “I’ll admit, it was a little uncomfortable at first. But they were already practically in a romantic relationship, you can’t expect them to go through what they did and not have  _ something _ happen, right?”

“Link hasn’t mentioned it, and I’m scared to bring it up. He’s so fragile, and I don’t know what’s going to set him off next. Lily went and got the mail this morning and he  _ freaked _ ! I can’t blame him, when he got snatched walking down the street in broad daylight, but  _ gosh _ if it ain’t exhausting.”

“Before all this, I used to ask Rhett to do something, then remind him five times and still have to do it myself at the end of the day. Now? He does it in seconds flat, and he gets so antsy about doin’ it right that I wish I’d never asked. That, and he’s disabled the doorbell. Sure, he  _ says  _ it broke, but I looked and  _ someone  _ took out the batteries.”

They exchange tired smiles. Jessie has been her rock through this, Christy would admit in a second. She saw how Christy was falling apart, and spent hours putting all the pieces back in the right working order. 

“Will it be any better, if they’re together? They themselves said the codependency thing was bad for them.” Keeping them apart had never felt right to her, but she’d have given Link anything he wanted in that moment. She still would, which is why she needs Jessie there to back her up.

“Look at it this way,” Jessie says. “It can’t be any worse.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one part left folks! There are a lot of plot threads to tie, and I hope I do them justice. Thank you as always for your lovely comments - I'm a little behind in replying because returning to work has been somewhat overwhelming, but please know that they are very much appreciated.


	13. Settle Down

[Day Nine]

Rhett is nervous. He is nervous about seeing his best friend. His best friend, who his wife says he can kiss. Whose wife agrees that kissing is good. With Rhett. Rhett and Link, kissing friends. Maybe more than kissing friends, but he’d agreed they’d cross that bridge if they ever came to it. 

“Maybe,” he’d said, “now that we’re out we won’t want that anymore.” 

Jessie gave him that  _ “You keep telling yourself that”  _ look. 

But they’d arranged it with Christy and Link, and the kids are all ready to have a sleepover at the Neals’ with their moms, whilst Rhett and Link have a dads’ night at the McLaughlins’ house.

Jessie is is picking the boys up from their evening classes at the pool, and Rhett is here, wondering if his life will ever be normal again, and if he’s fucked it all up or maybe ( _ please _ ) is about to step over the threshold of something wonderful in – he checks the time – two hours and thirty-six minutes.

His phone buzzes in his pocket, making him jump. He’s twitchy, these days. His therapist calls it ‘hypervigilance’. He looked that up on his phone after their appointment, which led to a long spiral of PTSD-related articles and a very embarrassing anxiety attack whilst waiting for his order in a TacoBell drive-thru. 

It’s Link. 

_ He’s not coming _ , Rhett thinks with terrible certainty. He hits ‘answer’ before he can chicken out.

“Hey buddyroll?”

“Rhett.”

The bottom drops out of his stomach. It’s Christy, voice thick with tears and panic.

“Rhett, I can’t find Link – I got back from the shops and he was actually sleeping so I left him there because he’s so tired all the time and it was only fifteen minutes and then he was just  _ gone. _ ”

_ Shit, shit, shit. _

“Have you checked everywhere in the house?” He’s reminded of that time when Lando disappeared for a whole hour at a family barbecue, and Link was beside himself with worry until Christy found the toddler fast asleep in an upstairs closet.

“ _ Everywhere _ ,” Christy says.

“Right. You stay there in case he comes back – I’ll get Jessie to drive straight to you with the boys. Call the cops and I’ll get out and start looking.” It feels good to take charge, to be able to do something, at least. “The car’s still there, right?”

Christy shakily confirms.

It’s still light outside, 6 p.m., and his shadow stretches long ahead of him as he strikes out on the pavement. He heads in the direction of Link’s home – there’s only a mile between their houses, but if Link is travelling in the opposite direction he probably has a mile head start in that fifteen minutes. Two, if he’s running.

Rhett can’t stop thinking about  _ why _ . Why would Link run away? Is it because of tonight – had they pressured him into this? Was it too soon? (What if Link never wanted to see him again?)

He’s a block away from the Neals’ street when he gets an alert on his phone – not a message, but a notification for his doorbell app.

_ There is motion at your front door _ .

He barely dares to hope as he opens it, but one look at the blurry, hunched figure his front door camera has captured is all he needs for relief to come flooding over him. He turns on his heel and pushes into a faster jog, ringing Christy as he does so.

“He’s at our place,” he pants. “I’m headin’ there now – you know where the spare key is hidden, right? I’ll probably beat you there anyway, but –”

He hears Christy tell Jessie the good news, hears his wife let out a ‘ _ oh thank fuck for that’ _ .

“Give him a hug for me, Rhett,” Christy says. “And tell him never to do it again?”

It takes him a minute to process what she’s saying.

“You’re not coming?”

“He’s headed to  _ your  _ house, I think it’s you he needs right now. I’ll come if he wants me, make sure he knows that. I – I think he does, but he gets too inside his head sometimes to realise.”

“I’ll let him know, Chris. Thank you.” 

God, he and Link really got lucky, didn’t they?

The door is unlocked, the spare key missing from its hiding spot. 

“Link?” The house is quiet, but the pale carpet has dirt tracked over it, and it's smudged with a dark rust colour that makes his gut tighten with renewed anxiety. He follows this trail through to the downstairs bathroom, where he can hear a soft muttering on the other side of the door.

“Link? Can I come in?”

“Y-yeah,” Link’s reply is shaky. 

Rhett pulls the door open and finds Link sitting on the tile floor, trying to clean his feet. His soles are black with dirt and there’s bloody TP scrunched up on the floor.

“ _ Shit _ , Link, where are your shoes? Did you walk over here  _ barefoot _ ?”

Unusually compliant, Link allows him to take over, grabbing a well-stocked first-aid tin from under the sink.“I wasn’t really thinking about shoes,” he says quietly. 

Rhett runs warm water in the sink.“What were you thinkin’, bo?” 

“I needed to – I had a nightmare, only I wasn’t really thinkin’ it was just a dream, and I had to –”

Rhett’s chest aches, because he knows exactly what Link means. How many nights in the hospital did he wake up and check Link was still breathing? He still worries when Jessie or the kids step out of sight or close the door that something may be happening to them and he doesn’t know it.

“I’m here now,” he says. He soaks a washcloth in the warm, soapy water, and hunkers down to lift Link’s ankle.

“I knew. I knew as soon as I got here, that I’d been dreaming. It’s so dumb, I …” Link pauses for a moment. “It was s’posed to be over. But it’s not.”

“I feel ya, bud. Let me know if this hurts, okay?” The cut is on the other foot, he thinks, but he can’t be too careful. Not today. He switches between the sink and Link’s left foot until the water turns black and murky, and he towels that foot dry while it refills with clean water. 

Cleaning the right is a little harder. He hisses a breath through his teeth when he spots the sizable laceration just under the ball of the foot. 

Link cranes his neck to see.

“Don’t, you’ll faint.”

“Is there something stuck in it? I think I trod on some glass. I went down the cut-through.”

“What? That’s the long way round.”

“Not if you jump the fence.”

“ _ Link _ , seriously?” 

Link gives him a weak grin and Rhett rolls his eyes.

“This is gonna sting.” He breaks out the antiseptic, starting with the liquid sort to wash it out, before moving in with wipes. Link, to his credit, barely even flinches. Rhett can feel eyes fixed on him. 

Once he’s satisfied the cut is clean, he slathers it in Neosporin and tapes a dressing over it.

“All fixed.” He pats Link’s foot, lowers it to the floor, and finally meets his eyes.

“Hey,” Link says, softly. “Why you cryin’?” 

Is he? Huh. 

When Link hugs him, he smells like laundry detergent and cut grass – and a bit like sweat, but not in a  _ bad _ way. 

“We might have been a bit dumb,” he says, scrubbing a hand across his eyes.

Link leans into him, wrapping him up in a gentle hug.“We’ve always been a bit dumb, brother, you’ll have to be more specific.”

“The staying apart thing. I mean, it lasted all of two days, but still. It was a shit idea.”

“We were so focussed on getting back to normal, that we kinda forgot that livin’ out of each other’s back pockets  _ is _ our normal. I guess.”

Rhett snorts. “We were already codependent, what’s a little more?” 

“Can I kiss you?” Link asks suddenly. “I mean, I know we already discussed this, kinda, with the girls on the phone …”

“Yeah.” He lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I’d really like that.”

They don’t do anything more than kissing, not that night. They don’t even kiss all that much. Link calls Christy to check in whilst Rhett orders takeout, and then they watch movies and talk. 

“We should turn in,” Rhett says, as midnight tips into the early hours. 

“Mmm,” Link says.

“You need to  _ sleep _ , Neal. It’s a requirement of this whole ‘functional human being’ thing, not an optional add-on. C’mon.”

He takes him to the guest room, not sure how he – or Jessie – feels about sleeping with Link in the marital bed just yet, even if things stay PG. The closer Link gets, the more he shrinks in on himself. 

“I’ll be right back, just gotta grab you something to sleep in.” Rhett tries to be quick about it, grabbing a t-shirt and a soft pair of sweatpants he’s had since college, as well as a pair for himself. 

He’s not sure Link has moved even an inch while he was gone, still hunched miserably at the end of the bed, staring at the floor. Rhett pushes the clothes into his hands and strips off his own shirt. Link looks up, confused.

“You’re – ?”

“Link,” Rhett says slowly. “Did you think I was gonna leave you in here to sleep on your own?”

Link nodded, colour rushing into his cheeks.

“Were you freaking out about that?”

Another nod.

“Right,” he says decisively. “New proposal – and this applies to both of us, okay? If something –  _ anything  _ – sets one of us, we gotta tell the other. Deal? Even if it’s dumb.”

They shake on it and finish changing, then Rhett tricks Link into bed with kisses, turning on him once they’re under the covers, tickling up and down his sides and making him shriek.

“Stopstop _ stop _ Rhett you’re a  _ monster _ !” 

He eventually shows mercy, flopping onto his back. Their arms are looped together, both of them panting and giggling. He pulls Link, floppy and relaxed, against his side. 

“Sleep, or I’ll tickle you again.”

“You got it,” Link says through a wide yawn. 

“And wake me up if you have a nightmare, okay?”

“Mmhmm, you too.”

“Love you, buddy.”

“Rhett?”

“Yeah?”

“Go to sleep.” He gives Rhett’s shoulder a light slap, then nuzzles his face against it. “Love you, too, dumbass.”

[Day Twenty-Four]

Jessie awakes to quiet, low voices in the hallway. She doesn’t open her eyes.  _ Link is here _ . She’s become almost used to getting up for a drink of water in the night only to find her husband on the couch, half-asleep and clinging desperately to his best friend, like if he lets him go Link might float away out the window.

She expects to hear the silent retreat of footsteps, shutting her eyes and resigning herself to another morning of waking up alone, but instead she’s startled up by a soft knock on the bedroom door.

“Babe, you awake?” 

“Come in, Rhett.” She sits up, switching on her bedside lamp and blinking owlishly at the clock. Midnight.

It’s been a  _ process _ , this thing. They’d known it was going to be complicated, tied up as it was in recovery from trauma and guilt and their one-man-one-woman backgrounds. She and Christy aren’t saints, but they’ve never pretended to be. All four of them have agreed that, without total transparency, this thing can’t work. Which has led to some  _ interesting _ situations, the most unexpected being a phone call from Christy, who wanted to know her opinion on the ethics of getting off to the idea of their husbands  _ doing stuff _ together. It’s not something that revs _ Jessie’s _ engine, but apparently it really,  _ really _ does it for her friend.

So, they’re getting there. Slowly.

Rhett sticks his tousled head around the door. 

“Link wants to talk to you. Can he come in?”

Link’s hair is sticking out every-which-way as he shuffles in, and his eyes are a little puffy. Rhett presses a quick kiss to his temple, and gives Jessie a thumbs up before he retreats from the room entirely, pushing the door to.

“Sorry to wake you up, Jess.”

“It’s fine, I know these aren’t exactly normal circumstances. Come sit down.” She pats the end of the bed. “What’s up?”

“I’m not staying the night, I just … I had to do this now, or I never would. You know? It’s stupid, I just …” he sighs. “Lemme start again.”

She mimes wiping the air clean. “Go for it.”

“I know we spoke about this whole thing before, over the phone – but it was all four of us, and it was new and not really the time. I want – I  _ need _ to apologise.”

“What for? Because I’m not letting you apologise for anything that wasn’t your fault,” she warns. She’s been through this with Rhett already. 

“No,” he says. “It’s for … before. This is all pretty new for Rhett, but I’ve been … I’ve been in love with him for a long time, though I’d never admit it, not to Christy, not even to myself.”

“For what it’s worth,” she says, “I’m pretty sure Rhett loved you too. Before everything.”

“But it’s not that,” he says. “No just … I  _ lusted _ after him, Jessie. After  _ your _ husband. A-and that’s not okay.”

“Did you ever act on it?”

Link’s eyes nearly bulge out of his head at the question, and she’s quick to clarify. “ _ With him _ , I mean!” Link Neal is not the only one to accidentally innuendo, it seems.

He shakes his head. “Rhett had no idea.”

“Then I accept your apology – but only because you need me to. You don’t need to apologise for thoughts and feelings Link, but what you do with them.”

“I’ll take it.” He’s sitting a little straighter, and the smile has returned to his eyes. Then he bites his lip.

“I … I haven’t told Rhett this,” he starts. “But there was something that happened, in the room. A couple things, actually, but. I messed up. I deleted an email I shouldn’t have – I was trying to protect him, so I had a good reason for it, but it was dumb and impulsive and …” his hands go to his temples, massaging like he’s fighting off a headache. “They sent me these photos. Ones they’d taken of me – and Rhett, kind of, but it was mainly me. N-naked. And they said they were sending them to Christy.”

“She never said anything about them.”

“The police said they had no record of any communication from the kidnappers. No ransom, no letters. And she knows everything that happened in there, knows about the sex stuff and the – the scary stuff. But I’m so frightened that those pictures are going to turn up. In the post, or on the internet.”

“I’ll bet,” she says softly. “C’mere Linkster.” 

He’s shaking when she hugs him, and she gently rocks them from side-to-side. 

“You’re allowed to be frightened. Have you told Christy?”

He shakes his head. “I haven’t even told the police.”

“I think you should. Or this is just going to hang over your head.”

“Yeah.” He lets out a wobbly breath, but there’s a hint of resolve there, as well as relief. 

“Now,” she lets him go. “You need to go to bed.”

“I need to go home. Christy –”

Jessie grabs her phone and waggles it at him. “ _ Christy _ says she doesn’t want you driving sleepy, mister.  _ Bed _ , now. But if I could have my husband back for tomorrow night, I’d appreciate it.”

“Sounds like a deal. Night Jessie.”

“Sleep tight, Neal.”

She turns her light off as the door closes. Five minutes later, Rhett sneaks back in, giving her a long, loving kiss.

“You better not catch herpes,” she says, pointing at him. She knows he’s being careful.

“You’re the best,” he says, and sneaks away again. 

_ Doofus _ , she smiles into her pillow.

Six months later. 

[Day 204]

The creative house is a  _ decision _ . One to give them some space, one to help them manage the timetable that they’ve set out in the timeshare their relationships have become. Sometimes Rhett desperately needs to be alone, and soon there will be a house where he can be it without hurting anyone else’s feelings. 

They’re looking at the first place tonight and he has a good feeling about it. Then, he and Link have their date night at the Neals’ house. He has a good feeling about _ that _ too.

On Wednesday, they’re going to sit down at their desk, in front of the camera and the crew, and see what happens.

They’re not okay yet, Rhett thinks to himself as he puts the batteries back into his front door ringer. But they will be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And there it is! I really really appreciate all the comments and kudos you guys have sent my way. This has been a real writing adventure, and you've been lovely.  
> Go check out < a href=”https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowyer/pseuds/bowyer” > Bowyer's lovely oneshot < /a > if you haven't already - she's been a fantastic beta. This is my first fic in the fandom (and probably won't be the last!) but if you liked my writing, I have various vidja game fandom fic < a href=”https://archiveofourown.org/users/erry” > over here < /a > if you happen to like Tales from the Borderlands and Fallout (the latter has longfic impending).  
> <3


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